Here is Charles Wood’s Economic Development Update he released on Friday. Wood is the senior vp for Economic Development for the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce.
# DATCOM – Our armed services department (Headed up by Craig Dalton) held their Defense Aerospace and Technology Committee (DATCOM) meeting this week week. The committee is made up of our technology based defense contractors, which range from the big guys like General Dynamics & Lockheed Martin to our smaller technology defense contractors like Techsoft and Hixardt Technologies.
Several of them are landing big contracts and creating partnerships that are making a significant impact on the Pensacola Bay Area as highlighted in the following link: http://www.pensacolachamber.com/ArmedServices/datcom_newsletter2.html.
These meetings allow us to leverage the Chamber’s Armed Services department by creating a business retention tool for the economic development department, allowing us to touch multiple contractors in one meeting.
# TALTECH – Bridgette Price, our Assistant VP for Entrepreneurship headed out for Tallahassee to attend TalTech’s technology expo today. TalTech, is a Tallahassee-based group which focuses on uniting technology-oriented corporations, entrepreneurs, students and others in Tallahassee. While the expo will focus on several things from Green IT to Social Networking, our goal is to continue to build relationships throughout Northwest Florida and beyond, raise awareness of Pensacola’s technology base, and look for future business development opportunities.
# Project Activity – We added another technology prospect to our list this week and are working on two proposals that will go out next week. Unfortunately, we were knocked of the list for two projects we submitted on earlier this year. One stopped their search all together, deciding to expand at an existing facility in another state and the other eliminated all locations in Florida.
# Did you know? – 80% of all job growth comes from existing companies. Despite significant reduction in public funding over the last two years, we added a new position to manage all economic development existing business efforts. We were able to do this by creating a partnership between the Chamber and Workforce Escarosa.
The position (held by Kara Melendez) is devoted to meeting directly with existing companies throughout Escambia County, marketing programs provided by Workforce Escarosa, and providing businesses with expertise regarding state and local programs that will assist in their expansion needs.