The San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber’s recent Portland Study Mission found a region that is attracting new businesses with proactive policies and with public-private partnerships — including outsourcing permitting — and preserving a comfy quality of life rooted in sustainable principles.
The result? A company like Intel getting into the ground a $3 billion facility in less than a year, a vibrant downtown filled with people and bicycles, light rail to the airport, and a healthy respect for open space. Is it perfect? No, but there are lessons to be learned.
Last week the San Jose City Council approved a new general plan that emphasizes jobs and putting homes closer to where people work. Mayor Chuck Reed noted, however, that San Jose’s permit policies and zoning ordinances were still likely impediments to attracting new business. He cited a recent developer who began looking elsewhere in Silicon Valley after finding San Jose’s traffic impact fees amounted to $13 million. We have to do better.
People often wonder, what’s the value of a chamber of commerce visiting another city? Well, it’s to peek under the hood of another region and see how it works, both good and bad. In Portland, the chamber delegation found a regional economic development strategy that’s paying off.
The Portland region has an economic development corporation focused on retaining, expanding and recruiting news businesses. It has an aggressive brand and marketing campaign that targets Fortune 500 companies, and a strategy to grow even more jobs in their supply chains. Portland also has urban development boundaries that help keep agriculture and sustainable farming in place while making way for higher-density housing and new business along transit corridors.
The fact is Portland area communities are becoming very competitive at going after Silicon Valley-style businesses with nimble permitting, a better tax climate, lower housing costs, a good quality of life — led by an aggressive economic development strategy.
Now consider San Jose: We have an astute new general plan, but it won’t work if we can’t attract new businesses, let alone keep the ones we have. If our fees are too high and the permitting process is broken, then let’s fix it.
Yes, the city is struggling with budget deficits and reduced staffing. But it’s all connected. When you lower pension and benefit costs, city expenses are lower, and perhaps we can lower development fees and impact fees and taxes. That makes us more competitive, which in turn will attract more businesses, which will employ more people, which will bring more tax dollars to pay for essential services. It’s the wheel of economic development, and it must be supported simultaneously all along its cycle.
We need to lower pension costs and fix the permitting process and create public-private partnerships that help retain and expand businesses. Author Jim Collins famously describes this phenomena in “Built To Last” as the Tyranny of the OR, the Genius of the AND.
It’s my belief that the San Jose and the Silicon Valley region must work together collaboratively to create a brand and strategy to compete with smaller communities like Hillsboro, Ore., and others that are attracting world-class companies like Sun World and Genentech. We can no longer be passive. We must work hard to keep what we have, grow our own, and recruit new start-ups. We can overcome a perception of negative business climate because, let’s face it, we are a great place to start a business, invest, live, work, play, raise a family.
As the SJSV Chamber moves into 2012, we will be strengthening our operations so we can better tell our region’s story and play a key role in the cycle of economic development.
MATTHEW MAHOOD is president and CEO of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. He wrote this for this newspaper.
