Bart “Silver Lining” Phillips is not one to be intimidated by a few statistics. That current 14.8 percent local unemployment rate and those 31,000 out-of-work Clark County residents only represent a world of opportunity, at least in the mind of the Columbia River Economic Development Council’s president.
As Libby Tucker reported in Friday’s Columbian, Phillips and the rest of the CREDC crew are responding to the current economic slump with an aggressive business-recruiting approach that has produced more opportunities, if not more outright businesses and jobs. Already this year the CREDC has heavily recruited 20 companies from outside the area that are interested in moving to Southwest Washington. That’s a more vigorous pace than in 2009 when 55 companies were wooed during the entire year. Even in the worst of economic times, last year CREDC successfully recruited seven companies to our community, with 167 direct jobs and a combined $72 million in overall business development.
We’re hoping that all of this year’s fishing turns into actual catching and some of those 20 leads can be turned into new local businesses. Combined, they represent more than 2,000 jobs and $100 million in local business investment. Most of the companies are firmly established manufacturing-sector firms, which Phillips sees as an encouraging trend. “Manufacturing may be what leads us out of this recession, vs. consumer spending as it has in the past,” he said.
If so, that would represent the second tactical shift in recent months as the CREDC has battled the Great Recession. As we editorialized in November, local economic development officials no longer believe increasing the population automatically boosts the local economy. Now, the approach is more direct: “more people” has been replaced by “more jobs.”
Several other strategies are strengthening the local economic development efforts. In addition to bringing in new companies, CREDC is focusing on helping existing businesses survive and plan for expansion during the recovery. And a new emphasis is placed on entrepreneurship, so that innovation can march in tandem with traditional business drivers. (Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and angel investors are encouraged to attend the CREDC’s next “PubTalk” event on April 21. Details and a registration form are available at http://www.CREDC.org.)
Speaking of innovation, several of those 20 companies that have been contacted are in the fields of clean technology and renewable energy. That strategy puts Clark County in good standing with the statewide initiative. Already the clean-energy business sector employs about 100,000 workers across Washington. With legislative incentives and ongoing and emerging federal stimulus programs, clean energy likely is just gaining a foothold in the Northwest. In other words, those massive wind turbines that you’ve seen trucked from Vancouver up the Columbia River Gorge represent only a portion of the prosperity that could be waiting just around the corner.
In an “open letter to staff” on the CREDC Web site, Phillips wrote: “Our clients are looking to take advantage of the economic recovery, be it simply bringing back laid-off workers to planning for that next expansion.”
That means a forceful pursuit of the goal “to secure more than our fair share of the economic recovery.”
The long-anticipated recovery is still in its infancy nationally, and on the local level there’s no reason to get overly jubilant about any approaching boom times until the unemployment slide is reversed. Still, it’s encouraging to see the CREDC’s dogged pursuit of companies and jobs.
