Faced with a shrinking budget, Vancouver city officials are taking a collaborative approach to achieve a long-standing goal: making the city friendlier to businesses.
That was the message delivered by Alisa Pyszka, the city’s business development manager, who spoke Friday at Banner Bank on Southeast 164th Avenue as part of a networking event sponsored by the East Vancouver Business Association.
Vancouver already is attractive to prospective employers, Pyszka said, and has the capacity to compete well against others for new business. Case in point: PeaceHealth, which recently became the corporate parent of Southwest Washington Medical Center, is moving its Bellevue headquarters to Vancouver, bringing 340 jobs by 2014 and a total of about 700 by the end of the decade.
To help it decide where to go, PeaceHealth commissioned a comprehensive study by global consultants CB Richard Ellis and Deloitte, Pyszka told the more than 50 attendees at Friday’s event. Ultimately, the nonprofit organization selected Vancouver out of six cities that were examined.
“They decided Vancouver was the place to be,” she said.
PeaceHealth is considering two parts of town for its headquarters: downtown Vancouver or east Vancouver, Pyszka said. Brien Lautman, a spokesman for PeaceHealth, said Friday the nonprofit expects to make a decision by June.
However, Pyszka said, while Vancouver is very good at helping major employers, such as PeaceHealth, choose building sites and navigate permitting issues, it needs to do a better job for existing small businesses or those who want to launch a small company.
To that end, the city has teamed up with several other business-friendly organizations, including the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce and the nonprofit SCORE, to build a website that will serve as a clearinghouse of information for small businesses.
Development of the website is in the early stages, Pyszka said, but it will put resources for small companies — including everything from how to develop a business plan to who to call for help — in one place in a user-friendly format.
Pyszka said the city also is collaborating with others to promote the Portland-Vancouver region to prospective employers around the country and globally. A prime example of that is the regional “Land Here, Live Here” campaign to lure companies to move to the region and grow here.
To further the campaign, Pyszka said, the city is working with the economic development group Greenlight Greater Portland to fly corporate leaders into the region in September to see what they want to see — whether it’s Class A office space or research and development facilities.
The idea is to let everyone know the region is open for business.
Pyszka said the “Land Here, Live Here” campaign recognizes that Vancouver and Portland aren’t mutually exclusive cities. About 90,000 commuters who live here cross the Interstate 5 Bridge to work in Oregon, she said, while about 30,000 commuters who live in Oregon cross the bridge to work here.
“They’re not recognizing geopolitical boundaries,” Pyszka said.
Neither is the city of Vancouver letting boundaries prevent it from working with others, she said. “We’re using our resources wisely.”
That’s important when you consider the budget cuts and consolidation moves the city has made to deal with declining revenue, Pyszka said. She said she is now the “sole practitioner” for economic development in the city.
That means she’s constantly asking herself what’s the most efficient use of her time and what are the most pressing issues that need solving.
Pyszka, with a background in commercial project management and urban planning, said she can’t create jobs. What she can do, she said, is “create a fertile ground” to enable businesses to be successful.
