O’Sullivan’s speech at Chamber annual meeting

Given today at New World Landing:

Good morning and welcome. We’re here today because we share an interest, a love and a concern for our community. Whether we’re small business owners or members of a large corporation, I think it’s fair to say we believe in working for a better Pensacola and Escambia County.

Today I’m going to tell you two things. I’m going to tell you what your Chamber is doing, based on what you told us our community needs. And I’m going to discuss some ideas for testing whether our Economic Development plan is what it should be.

First, let’s talk about what your Chamber of Commerce has been doing to grow our community and develop business.

The answer is we’ve been doing quite a lot, and doing it with a very capable team.

I’d like to introduce the leaders from the management team along with their volunteer Vice-chair in each department.

Please stand and remain standing as I call your name:

Charles Wood and Blaise Adams, Economic Development; Craig Dalton and Tim Wright, Armed Services; Ed Schroeder and John Panyko, Tourism; Natalie Prim with Community Development – this past year Chris Cavanaugh served as Vice-chair; Hope Allen and Donnie McMahon, Membership; Meredith Robinson and Dick Baker, Finance; and the leader of our team – our President, Evon Emerson.

Please join me in giving them a well-deserved thank you and a round of applause.

Some of our work is pretty heady stuff but it’s hard to see. It’s part of a strategy called “Economic Gardening,” something your Chamber’s been working on for awhile. The idea in a nutshell is to sow entrepreneurial seeds, to lay economic foundations, to prepare the infrastructure necessary to cultivate new, high-tech businesses. In short, creating a fertile environment for good, high-paying jobs.

It’s different from “Economic Hunting,” a strategy more typical in larger cities where you go out and hunt opportunities outside your community and entice them to relocate.

Every great city needs to both “hunt” and “garden.”

As our members, you told us early this year, in your survey responses, that your top three concerns are Economic Development, business retention and expansion, and downtown development. In short, again, creating jobs.

We’ve listened to you, and have recognized that a key component of your number one concern, Economic Development, is a successful education system.

Your Chamber is partnering with the Escambia and Santa Rosa school districts, PJC, UWF, our Regional Workforce Board and Gulf Power to develop the “Northwest Florida Next Generation Learning Community” to build a system of career academies offering career development to students as young as middle-schoolers.

With the Ford Motor Co. Fund we’re developing a five-year plan to implement and sustain those career academies. The academies will include industry councils in targeted areas like information technology.

We’re also partnering with the school districts to implement FORD PAS, an innovative teaching curriculum for the 21st century classroom, and in January the Ford Fund will advance our work to the “Leadership Level,” their highest level of achievement.

Jobs. By preparing our children and grandchildren for innovative, higher paying work we’re building a reputation that will help us attract the very companies that will provide those jobs.

Not only do we need to build skills through education, but to grow more high-tech businesses and retain young workers we must also demonstrate our commitment to innovation and technology. With PJC and others, including the Gulf Coast African-American Chamber, your Chamber has created a technology incubator in downtown Pensacola,

Housed in the Downtown PJC building, The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (or CIE) helps new technology businesses develop and manage their initial growth. The goal is growing strong local companies and harvesting more jobs in our own garden. It’s working. Our first tenant arrived the day we opened two months ago and is now asking for more space.

-iTenWired, one of our most exciting new programs, is developing and connecting innovative, technologically savvy entrepreneurs along the I-10 corridor from Mobile to Ft. Walton. By doing so, your Chamber is creating synergy among our area’s high-tech ventures.
By connecting these companies with the partners they need, whether they come from the military, universities, venture capitalists, or international trade experts, we strengthen existing companies while attracting new ones, in the process growing more high-wage jobs.

-At Saufley Field, along with the Navy your Chamber is developing the Saufley Enhanced Use Lease Project, putting Pensacola on the way to attracting high-paying aviation and IT jobs.

With 700,000 square feet of office space, three hangars, access to runways and a tremendous IT infrastructure, this is one of the largest developments and the most UNIQUE economic development opportunity between Mobile and Tallahassee.

It’s one of the many successes of our Military Affairs Department, which remains aware of the great strengths the Navy brings to our community.

-Last fall, the Chamber sponsored the first national Strategic Health Intelligence Summit at the Crowne Plaza. Organized and conducted by your Chamber, through the leadership of our military affairs department, the summit gained national recognition. At a second conference, scheduled this fall at the Hilton Pensacola Beach, we expect sponsors and attendees from across the country.

The Pensacola Innovation Network is an outgrowth of that summit and was developed in conjunction with UWF, the Department of Defense, IHMC, Baptist, Sacred Heart and others. The network plugs our community into National LambdaRail, the world’s fastest network, passing information along at 10 gigabytes per second. Innovative and Cutting edge. This network gives our technology community an advantage in global markets while, just as importantly, creating new jobs and helping reduce our cost of health care.

With both the Summits and the Innovation Network we are reaping the benefits of UWF investing in an equity stake in Florida LambaRail. That investment, that vision, has given our community an advantage over many in the country by bringing us a high-speed, high-volume, next generation communications network. For that vision, we thank the leadership of UWF.

The success of the conference, and the high-speed network that grew out of it, truly differentiates us. We’re the first community in the nation that has pulled this together, bringing us the reputation as a national center of excellence. That, in turn will attract more companies and more high-paying jobs.

Let’s return to our “hunting” and “gardening” metaphors for a minute.

We at the Chamber continue to work closely with Enterprise Florida, and site re-location consultants from around the country, “hunting” always for companies to relocate here. But, as I mentioned before, we think an equally strong strategy is the “Economic Gardening” model that lays the foundations to make Pensacola and Escambia County, already so beautiful, and with such willing, capable workers, the kind of place where entrepreneurs want to come and grow their businesses.

An example is the Technology Park planned south of the Civic Center and east of St. Michael’s Cemetery. The County and City have transferred their ownership to the PEDC, and engineering is underway for a development that will attract more than $50 million in new capital investment while creating 1,000 new jobs averaging more than $50,000 annually in salaries. The site work will be complete in little more than a year and the first of several buildings will begin construction.

We expect that an offshoot of the project is that some of those who work there may want to live nearby, maybe in Aragon, the historic district, or even along Palafox Street. This would boost the long-held dream of a “24-hour-a-day” downtown – something we know is vital in keeping young talent here.

To that end, I want to recognize the vision of the Downtown Improvement Board, working to create, preserve and grow one of our greatest resources, downtown Pensacola. I commend you.

Another “foundation” is the “Midtown Palafox Commerce Park” (formally known as Mount Dioxin) coming to fruition on the old Escambia Treating site after six years of long, hard work by your Chamber. The $27M remediation process is underway and the Chamber is cooperating with local governments to develop a common vision for the property’s recasting as a site-ready development. This will offer the vital infrastructure needed to attract new companies and to improve opportunities for existing local companies, all the while creating more good jobs.

And one of our biggest foundations will be the Community Maritime Park, coupled with the relocation of the Main Street Wastewater plant. Today, we are full of excitement and anticipation as we await the impact of how this park will create jobs, bring our community to the waterfront and re-vitalize downtown. The park is an example of a great tool for economic hunting, giving us much to offer when relocation prospects are looking at our community, as well as a great example of economic gardening as we grow our own success.

Much of this is about looking to, and planning for, the future. But even at a time when many communities are losing jobs, your Chamber has never neglected the hard, pick-and-shovel work of building our economy one job, one salary, one investment at a time.

The numbers representing the Chamber’s accomplishments are clear. Over the last three years your Chamber has been instrumental:

-In creating 2,613 new jobs with average annual salaries exceeding $36,000.
-In increasing total capital investment in the Pensacola Bay Area by more than $251 million.
-In adding more than $95 million in new annual payroll to Pensacola’s economy.

Navy Federal Credit Union created an initial 500 jobs when it came to Escambia County in 2003. Since then, it’s expanded to 1,200 jobs and is planning additional growth to some 3,000 jobs. Those jobs pay an average of almost $40,000 a year, with an additional 40 percent in compensation when benefits are included. Good jobs. Secure jobs.

Perhaps you’ve heard that T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman, has an ambitious plan for harvesting wind energy. It’s projected that General Electric, right here in Pensacola, will be the beneficiary of Pickens’ plan as he turns to them for the wind turbines they manufacture. Currently, GE has 440 employees with salaries averaging $39,000 annually, but that’s expected to grow. Good jobs. Solid jobs.

Your Chamber also worked with Grocery Supply, a local company, to keep them and their 300 jobs in Escambia County.

Meanwhile, Old Faithful, our tourism economy continues importing dollars from outside our area, while creating jobs and allowing local companies to thrive. Last year, our tourism department brought 328 groups to the area, creating an economic impact of $13.3 million. The Pensacola Bay Area’s tourism team has just been recognized as the 2008 Convention and Visitor’s Bureau of the Year by the Southeast Tourism Society. …Well done.

Now those are real dollars and cents results. But given our nation’s economic cycle, and looking at our neighbors to the east and west, are those results good enough? And what’s next?

What’s next is doing it better, while finishing what we’ve started. Each year we need to be more creative and more aggressive.

I told you I was going to discuss testing our Economic Development model to see if it’s what it needs to be. Well, you know, every year we come here, and our leadership discusses the successes and challenges of the Chamber. We have lunch and go back to work, filing out while sometimes ignoring the elephant in the room.

Once outside, the conversation about the elephant begins. You’ve heard it.

Why are we hearing all these success stories out of Mobile?

Why do counties to the east of us seem to be prospering in a way we’re not?

Even though most of us chose to live here rather than either of those areas, it doesn’t negate the question.

What is your Chamber doing with the economic development money it gets from the city and county? Should it be doing more?

Well, every dollar of public support for economic development is matched by a private dollar raised from our members. Over the last 3 years we’ve created one job for every $1,000 of public money invested. I don’t know of any economic development group anywhere doing any better, especially when you consider that our level of funding, when adjusted for inflation, is less than it was five years ago.

But still we don’t need to ignore these questions. And we don’t need to have lunch and pretend that we in Escambia County aren’t facing some very real challenges when it comes to Economic Development.

Can we do a better job?

Should we reassess how our Economic Development effort is structured? How it is funded?

Do we need to improve our lines of communication with local government, with our members, with Escambia County’s citizens?

I think the answer to all those questions is – yes.

As the face of business in Escambia County, your Chamber should be at the forefront in asking these questions……and in seeking the answers to them. That’s why I’m proposing that we take the lead in a comprehensive, non-political, objective look at our Economic Development program. Its structure. Its funding. What we’re doing well, and where we can improve?

Three years ago, thanks to some Department of Defense funding, an expert team gave us a three-year plan called the TIP Strategies. At the Chamber, we began implementing that strategy. Some of the accomplishments I’ve outlined are the result of that.

Now it’s time once again to look at where we are and where we’re going. As we start our new fiscal year, I will ask our Chamber board to retain an outside expert or experts, someone with impeccable credentials, and give them free rein, and complete access, to every aspect of our community’s Economic Development effort.

We’ll engage a cross-section of our community – business leaders, office holders, academics and citizens, whoever might offer insight, whether individually or in discussions groups. We want to separate the wheat from the chaff, to assess our REAL challenges and understand their solutions.

Some of the questions that should be explored are:

-Locating a dedicated source of funding for Economic Development, perhaps something like the proceeds from an existing franchise tax or business license fees. Significant dollars from a stable funding source can make a marked difference.

-How are we to compete more effectively with Alabama when they’re able to offer more local- and state-backed incentives to attract business? That’s not an excuse, that’s a fact. Are there ways to level the playing field that we haven’t explored?

-If you didn’t know, our County Commission adopted a set of economic incentives, to attract business, that will be helpful as we go forward. Thank you Commissioner Gene Valentino for proposing it and thanks to all the commissioners for adopting it.

-And lastly, the question that’s kind of the elephant in the room, – have we in Escambia County, and at the Chamber, built the best model for attracting business, for building our economy?

-And is the Economic Development vehicle we’re now using housed in the right place?

In tough economic times, the quantity, the volume, the intensity of opinions about these questions grows.

However, we need more than opinions. We need solutions based on facts that give us the confidence we need to move forward as a community, to grow our economy faster, and to bring new jobs and new prosperity to the area we love.

So I propose an elephant hunt, a hunt to find solutions and to identify where we are as an Economic Development entity, where we need to go, how we need to get there, how much it is going to cost, what is our return on investment and how do we need to pay for it.

I know most of you in this room, and I believe I’m speaking for all of us when I say we’re not afraid of the hunt. Our goal is to strengthen and support current companies in retaining and growing jobs. Our goal is to attract and support new companies to create new jobs. Our goal is to retain talent in our area. All of these are vital to improving our quality of life, and increasing the opportunities for our children and grandchildren. In order to do that, we need the best Economic Development vehicle that can be built, so that Pensacola and Escambia County can look to a brighter economic future, and to even greater success.

And finally, as we challenge ourselves to reach higher and higher, I challenge each one of you. Ask yourself if we’re helping build our community into a better team. Are we able to forgive past slights and hurt feelings? Are we looking out for the good of the whole, even sometimes at the expense of our own interest? Do we recognize that our neighbor’s success will ultimately lead to our success? Do we make a conscious decision to be positive? Do we respectfully confront others who need the same reminder?

Remember, our families, our homes, our communities are what we make them to be. Let’s all join together, working as a team, and drive this community to prosperity and happiness. And remember, economic gardening requires a lot of water, most of it the sweat from our brows.

Thank you.