For about a decade and a half, the huge, over 170-hectare, site of the former nuke plant project in Teplodar, Odesa Oblast, was dormant, abandoned by the original project and almost undisturbed by new ones. Though the local government did their best to change the situation, it was only after the USAID Local Investment and National Competitiveness Project (USAID LINC) had helped the city write an economic development strategy and created a conceptual design of the site that serious investors discovered Teplodar and its investment opportunities.

Mayor Leonid Pechersky calls it the “city of dramatic fate.” He says that when he took over the mayoral office in 2002 the city was depressive – littered streets, water supply only two hours a day, frequent electric power breaks, and the heating season beginning in December and ending in January. The latter is an especially sad irony, since the city’s name – Teplodar – in Ukrainian literally means Heat-Giving.

The origin of Teplodar, now having a population of about 10,000, goes back to the early 1980s, when the Soviet government selected this territory for the Odesa Nuclear Power-and-Heating Plant project site, and started developing a settlement. In the late 1980s, following the Chornobyl Disaster – the world’s worst nuclear accident at the time – the project was suspended, and it was completely discontinued in 1997 in independent Ukraine.

”People came, hiving off, for the Nuclear Plant project from all over the Soviet Union. The best specialists – erectors, power engineers. And when the project ceased, they in fact were cut adrift,” recites Mr. Pechersky.

Since then, the “city of dramatic fate” has changed dramatically. “The city is not prosperous as yet, but it’s on its way to prosperity,” according to the Mayor, who cites the “arrival of business” and rocketed local budget own revenues. “One of our cries is to make the city all-sufficient, turn it from a subsidies recipient into a donor.”

USAID LINC intervened in this “way to prosperity” in October 2009 by signing with the city a protocol of intentions to develop and implement a Teplodar Economic Development Strategic Plan – after having broken the Mayor’s pessimistic stance toward the project, as he later confessed. An expert committee was formed in the city, which under the guidance of USAID LINC experts drafted the strategy, adopted by the City Rada in February 2010.

One month before the strategy adoption in Teplodar, the city had become a member of the Odesa-Teplodar-Yuzhne Sub-region – or Odesa Agglomeration – that had also set to drafting a common, sub-regional, competitiveness and economic development strategy with assistance from USAID LINC. By that time, Mr. Pechersky had become one of the most ardent advocates of the project as one “destined for success.”

In October 2010, USAID LINC developed a Conceptual Design of the Teplodar Industrial Park – based on the former nuke project site.

The first of the Teplodar strategy’s three critical issues is Investment Attraction. And indeed, the city has become investment-appealing. On June 20, 2011, in Kyiv, Odesa Oblast Deputy Governor Petro Khlytsov and China-based Qitele Group Co., Ltd. Director General Zhang Jinfei signed a $600 million worth framework agreement on investment collaboration in creating in Teplodar what the agreement calls an “Innovation-Industrial Production Base.” It is expected that by December 2012 – the end of the project’s first phase – Qitele will have invested $200 million, having created 2,000 jobs for Ukrainians on 50 hectares of the site.

Two days after the signing, the Qitele delegation visited Odesa to have a meeting with Governor Eduard Matviychuk, and then went to Teplodar in a company of several more potential investors from China.

The Teplodar Mayor also mentions other investment projects just launched in the city: construction of a state-of-the-art fats and oils plant, and modernization of the city’s outdoor lighting. The former project is expected to create 250 jobs in two years. The latter project, implemented by a Hungarian investor, must make the lighting energy-efficient, the resulting savings being equally divided between the city and the investor.

Mr. Pechersky links these recent successes to the results of USAID LINC work – the strategy itself along with the Teplodar Community Profile compiled as part of the strategic planning process, the conceptual design, and the fact that these documents were published on the Net in both Ukrainian and English. “We are very grateful to you [USAID LINC] for this work,” says the Mayor, stressing that it has been instrumental in achieving the successes. “I say this sincerely, and I’m ready to cry it all over the world.”

”Step by step, we are implementing the Strategic Plan. Your [USAID LINC’s] labors are being embodied. Nothing ever happens on a bare place, no manna falls from heaven. Any impromptu needs to be prepared,” Mr. Pechersky says.

Among other factors contributing to the favorable investment climate that has formed in Teplodar, he mentions the pro-investment position of the Governor, Mr. Matviychuk, at the Odesa Oblast level, and absolute intolerance of corruption in the city, whether actual or perceived. “I always position Teplodar as a corruption-free city. Wherever some or other element of corruption shows up, I burn it out with red-hot iron,” the Mayor states.

Telling about the anchor investment of Qitele – a manufacturer of plastic toys and playground equipment, whose web site is decorated with an iconostasis of various international quality and safety certificates, and whose products are sold in more than 20 countries including Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore, United Kingdom, and United States – Mr. Pechersky says, referring to his conversation with Mr. Zhang, that the “Chinese billionaire” owns other businesses that he intends to locate in Teplodar as well, namely the manufacture of cloths, footwear, and furniture, plus logistic warehouses.

The significance of the Qitele investment clearly goes beyond the boundaries of Teplodar and onto the Odesa Agglomeration – the planned 2,000 jobs after the first phase alone equal 20 percent of the city’s total population.

One month before the framework agreement signing in Kyiv, the Teplodar Mayor headed a delegation from the Odesa Oblast to China, where he had a number of meetings and was able to see Qitele’s manufacturing facilities and products. In Mr. Pechersky’s opinion, the Qitele playground equipment, though “fantastic,” was a bit too expensive for Ukrainian consumers, and he shared his doubts with Mr. Zhang. The latter, according to Mr. Pechersky, said that he didn’t care too much, viewing his future Ukrainian manufacturing facilities in the first place as a springboard for exports to Europe and Russia.

As of late July 2011, since its launch in April 2009, USAID LINC has helped 24 Ukrainian cities, raions and sub-regions develop their competitiveness and/or local economic development strategic plans. Twenty of these strategies have been adopted by respective Radas and are being implemented, and four are pending approval.