Director William Jabjiniak reported that starting next Monday, we will gradually start to move staff back into the office a third at a time.
City Hall is still not open to the public. The City is working to provide protection measures including plexiglass and hands-free sanitizer dispensers, etc.
Supervisor Sellers had mentioned a federal BUILD Grant.
The number for completing the six miles of rail extension is estimated to be in excess of $50-60 million, possibly up to $100 million depending on the number of different tracks and routes. The route has been roughed in and Union Pacific has really been out in front for us. We are not looking to spend any city dollars, although we have dedicated a staff person to coordinate the grant. There has been a lot of support on the national, state, regional and local level and all the property owners jumped in. That will take it from the Rittenhouse alignment near Power Road all the way to our border at Meridian.
That stretch will open up a lot of development opportunities in that south part of the city.
Our investment has really paid off.
Economic Development Advisory Board Meeting Minutes June 2, 2020
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Our staff have been able to pivot and adjust to keep things moving.
Last week, we had an electric vehicle manufacturer looking at opportunities down towards Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. Today, there was another project and Thursday there will be a third site visit. Two of those are electric vehicle manufacturers.
> We are seeing a tremendous amount of activity on Ray Road with multiple offers on some of the buildings that are up. Now we have the bigger floor plates available and the ease of access that is in demand today.
> We are also seeing activity in the Tech Corridor.
Raging Wire has started construction activity and there are a couple other major brand names looking there as well.
> Falcon Field has had a lot of good activity through private investments.
> There is activity on Higley on multiple buildings there.
> At the Union, the steel is up, and the parking garage is taking shape. Tenants are now starting to circle.
> Despite the pandemic and office being a tough one to deal with, we are seeing some office prospects at least engage in conversations.
> City Council is considering approximately $100 million in transportation projects to put out to voters for bonding. The investment in infrastructure will pay off long-term. We don’t want to burden the taxpayer, but you can get a lot accomplished at today’s rates.
> Mr. Jabjiniak asked Jaye O’Donnell to provide an update on a National League of Cities grant in partnership with Gilbert and Queen Creek.
Ms. O’Donnell advised that the National League of Cities (NLC) has a First Tier Suburbs grant where communities could apply to host an economic development summit selecting from a menu of topics. The summit would feature national speakers and best practices in order to vet what would work in that community. The first grant was awarded to Kansas City. NLC is partnering with TIP Strategies for data analytics and research. We learned about this grant opportunity at the end of March and the application was due April 10.
During that time, we were in the throes of COVID-19 trying to figure out our service protocol for our small businesses.
As the First Tier Suburbs Council favors regional applications, we felt it would be a huge benefit if we partnered with other municipalities in order to not duplicate services but leverage our resources and modernize our small business service line.
There is a certified economic development certification (CEcD) process people go through at the International Economic Development Council and we wondered if there was something of similar weight that we could aspire to deliver in the small business development realm.
We posed this to NLC along with the Towns of Queen Creek and Gilbert. They loved our application and were certainly looking at it through the lens of COVID-19.
The timing could not have been better.
We structured our application to frame the problem while also providing some excitement around possible solutions and what we could bring to bear as a community.
The deliverable is a summit, likely a virtual summit, in September with national and local speakers who are subject matter experts on a number of topics in small business development.
We also hope to have some of our current programs provide some ideas to the national attendees.
In November at the NLC Annual Conference, there will be a report on what the City of Mesa and our partners did under this banner of Resiliency, Equity and Inclusion.
Councilmember Duff thanked the entire Economic Development team, and especially Jaye O’Donnell.
Councilmember Duff had made the team aware of this grant and they put everything together in a few short weeks and did a stellar job.
This grant will make a huge difference, especially in the state of our economy. Local businesses are the stability that keeps us going day in and day out. All of these efforts serve our City as well as our businesses.
Mr. Jabjiniak stated three years ago, we compared ourselves against a set of national standards as a department in terms of whether we had a proper marketing plan, strategic plan, resources, and whether we have done BRE work and not just attraction work and were recognized as an Accredited Economic Development Organization.
We are now ready to submit for our reaccreditation before the end of June and are one of 70 international organizations that have this accreditation.
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He recognized the team for doing such a great job.
We are in even better shape now than we were three years ago and the reaccreditation process will be the test.
GPEC has been very active and very involved in helping their 22 member communities.
Mr. Jabjiniak received a call from another member community asking about the State CARES money.
They were looking to duplicate what we have put together in Mesa as we are viewed as a leader in the Valley.
He asked Mr. Pitcher for an update on GPEC.
Jeff Pitcher reported that GPEC is seeing the same kind of pickup in prospects regionally that we are seeing.
Their quarterly report showed 18 new prospects in April, which increased to 22 new prospects in May.
Their average is 22 to 25 a month. They are seeing a lot of players reactivate their projects and move forward in the greater Phoenix area.
On a regional basis, GPEC did about 10 research and marketing programs where they explored and highlighted certain industries like healthcare and global supply chain. Each of those programs had an average of 500 people in attendance. GPEC is able to do more on a regional basis, where Mesa is able to work on a small business community basis, and together, we are really serving the whole region. Things are looking up.
Mr. Jabjiniak keeps in touch with Chris Camacho, President and CEO of GPEC, and he coordinates with multiple communities to make sure we are all working together as a region.
He asked Matt Likens for an update on the Healthcare Council at GPEC.
Matt Likens noted that the quarterly meeting will be happening today at 9:30 and he will provide an update at a future EDAB meeting. A lot of the focus over the last few months has been gearing up to manage COVID. He felt Arizona has fared fairly well from a national perspective as well as making sure we have enough PPE available for the healthcare workers first of all and then the industries who are starting to repopulate their offices and factories.
Mr. Jabjiniak mentioned the global supply chain.
Historically, we had first focused on our industrial opportunities then we focused on commercial office.
He asked as an organization and as a city, do we need to reevaluate our strategic vision?
Do we need to look at infrastructure, as Supervisor Sellers mentioned?
Do we need to look at our industrial commercial mix?
We had a previous conversation about reshoring.
GPEC is refocusing on that and our own office is looking at putting out a reshoring campaign.
Reshoring is a big piece and a bigger opportunity. What we are starting to see is some regionalism and things like foreign trade zones become important.
We have a military reuse zone on an airport. That is a big savings.
We can create foreign trade subzones.
We will never have enough industrial, and the office market is a whole different animal.
We have a couple good projects; now you have to fill them.
For now, that industrial market is going to lead the recovery effort and it will be those big buildings that serve the manufacturing side as well as some logistics.
It was not even a year ago when they broke ground on that project in southeast Mesa, and to see the amount of activity they’ve had on 486,000 SF is astounding. Now we are hearing 500,000 and 600,000 SF. We have never been part of that category before. We need to have a diversified economy. A few years ago, we didn’t have the industrial space. Now, we have the bigger floorplates and higher ceilings. We didn’t have Class A office, and now we have a Class A building, or several. The market has changed, so you have to adapt to that but still continue to push that opportunity.
Retail has been hit hard and this community has always relied heavily on retail because it is sales-tax focused.
Our numbers are hanging in there because the people who are working here are still spending some money.
We have to continually evaluate the strategic plan.
Reshoring is going to be the big focus.
Mr. Campbell has spoken with some of the elected leaders on a regional basis, and noted they are not understanding that we may need to shift or retool some of our focus towards reshoring, towards the global supply chain, as that is where the source of the business is going to be.
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We needed the industrial, we chased it.
We needed the office, we chased it.
We have to look at the new opportunities to chase, spurring in those new deals as they come in. He appreciated all of the guidance and leadership in that regard. Mr. Jabjiniak stated technology and medical devices are big opportunities for us as we continue to march forward and make the community grow, not just in population.
The Census estimate puts Mesa at 518,0000.
In July, we will have data from a different source that will probably be a little more accurate that will push that even further.
That gives an idea of the amount of growth here in the number of households,
That is why he fights so hard to protect some of these employment areas to be able to see the job growth that is necessary. He urged the continued dialogue with elected officials about the needs in the marketplace.
