Tucked among the sweeping changes contained in the 120 pages of August’s Economic Development Bill is a provision intended to meld Massachusetts’ development agencies into a high-powered machine for attracting businesses into the commonwealth.

What was an informal network of grassroots organizations is now formalized and regimented to create better collaboration between separate agencies – or rather, it will be, when the Office of Business Development lays out the logistics to carry through with the Legislature’s plans.

Paul Matthews, executive director of the 495/Metrowest Partnership, a regional advocacy group, is looking forward to the changes, which he says will ideally take Massachusetts economic development “to the next level,” streamlining collaboration and helping create bigger programs across a number of regions or even statewide.

Like other development agencies, 495/Metrowest aims to make its turf – east-central Massachusetts, in this case – more appealing for businesses that want to locate there or expand operations. To that end, such agencies relay information to those businesses and work with municipalities and commercial real estate entities to help find suitable locations.

While business is carrying on mostly as usual, the agencies are all awaiting more information about how, exactly, the new rules will work, said David McKeehan, president of the North Central Massachusetts Development Corp., based in Fitchburg.

“We’re all anxious as to what our responsibilities will be and whether there are corresponding resources to [support the legislation’s guidelines],” he said, noting that, to his knowledge, no funding had yet been allocated to enact the changes put forth in the legislation. Calls to an Office of Business Development spokeswoman were not returned by press time.

‘Grassroots Up’

On paper, the new rules start from the ground up, defining what a “regional business development organization” is and what it’s supposed to do – in brief, it’s supposed to furnish advice and assistance to businesses looking to locate or expand in that organization’s territory.

But it also codifies the relationship between the organizations and the office of business development, officially creating that agency as command central. Also, it stipulates that up to 12 regional organizations can exist at one time. Currently, eight such organizations already exist statewide.

Most – including the Merrimack Valley Economic Development Council or the North Shore Alliance for Economic Development – are fairly new, McKeehan said, with many springing up in just the past several years. State funding for such organizations was previously available before the economic downturn. Now, many individual agencies draw from a few small streams of revenue from endeavors including real estate and alternative loan portfolios.

The new legislation, while creating a more formal structure, doesn’t micromanage, McKeehan said. “It really is a sort of ‘grassroots up’ and ‘top-down’ kind of meeting-in-the-middle approach.”

Matthews said Massachusetts hoped to emulate the kind of success North Carolina had in creating a formal structure for its own regional development entities. As of now, the regional groups collaborate and meet with Gregory Bialecki, secretary of Housing and Economic Development for the state, but now those relationships will move beyond the less-formal personal ties between groups.

With the groups working together in a more official capacity, they can collaborate more easily on regional projects or statewide initiatives. At this point, Matthews added, the state has to press every advantage to keep businesses, and the employees who buy homes and support other businesses, firmly rooted here.

“It’s a very cutthroat world right now from an economic development perspective,” Matthews said.