Chandler's population is aging. City hopes new project with schools will attract young families

Chandler is teaming up with several school districts on a new multi-year marketing project. It’s designed to attract young families and professionals to the city.

For the past five years, the city has been keeping a close eye on its population pyramid. That's a graph that shows the age distribution of people living in a certain area, with the bottom representing the number of young people and the top showing the number of older people.

Micah Miranda is the city’s economic development director.

“What we’re starting to see across Chandler is more of a rectangle," Miranda said. “We’re not having a lot of young people [move into] the community and the people that have been here are obviously aging.”

To fix that, the city and its neighboring school districts are investing tens of thousands of dollars to promote the benefits of living, working and raising a family in Chandler through various forms of media. The city received a $150,000 grant from the Industrial Development Authority and district will be contributing $10,000 each to the Campaign.

Miranda said they hope to increase enrollment in schools and make sure there’s a workforce to sustain local companies in the future.

"What we want to do through this campaign us reemphasize all the great amenities — whether it's educational, athletic, cultural, or public safety — that Chandler has to offer as a destination for young families and professionals as way to help fix our population pyramid," Miranda said.