Charles Wood, who heads economic development for the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, sent us this update:
* Incentive Competition is tough – We held a conference call with a site selection consultant who has sent us several RFPs for life sciences and medical device manufacturing projects about how Pensacola and Escambia County can be more competitive for this target industry. The very short answer was cash, which the companies can use to offset up front location and expansion costs. He gave an example of a recent medical device manufacturer RFP we submitted for that drew cash incentive offers from $5 to $40 million for a project that would hire 300-400 at $70,000 average salaries. As the number of economic development projects shrink both nationally and internationally, competition is getting fierce…expect to hear more on this issue.
* Technology Incubator Update – Our new technology incubator, the Gulf Coast Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (a partnership between the Chamber and PJC where the incubator is housed on the 3rd floor of the PJC Downtown Center) is starting to come together. We have our first tenant, our IT infrastructure is in place, an initial website is taking shape (www.gulfcoastinnovation.com), and we just received a tremendous gift from Regions Bank. Regions donated a significant amount of furniture to finish out most of our needs for the third and fourth floors of the PJC Downtown Center. If you see Region’s President Jim Donatelli, please thank him for his tremendous support for this new program.
* Enterprise Florida’s Stakeholder’s Council meeting – Enterprise Florida’s Stakeholders Council (which the Chamber holds a seat on) met this week in Tallahassee. The primary discussion items centered around the economic impacts being felt around the state and cuts to state economic development incentive funding. The Governor’s incentive closing fund has been zeroed out other than projects already in the pipeline, the innovation fund will stay at zero, however, the road incentive fund will generally stay intact (this program was used to build out the Heritage Oaks Commerce Park where Navy Federal Credit Union is located) and a new economic gardening pilot program is being put in place to provide up to $250,000 loans to small businesses.