Shannon NickinsonIt’s Scott Luth’s job to find jobs.
As the head of FloridaWest, Escambia County’s economic development agency, Luth is the point-man for selling Pensacola as the pick of the litter in the Southeast.
“All the companies that we work with are net importers of wealth and that’s where we focus,” Luth says. “That’s everything from our startup companies in the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship business incubator. Every one of those companies are generating a product or service that’s sold outside the region and importing dollars.”
But the truth is, he may never know what businesses he missed out on before he even had a chance to lure them to Pensacola.
“I’ll probably never know the projects that we missed because of some of the deficiencies that we have in the community and the reason is because they’ve already cut me before they even call me,” Luth says. “Most of companies are doing their first cut just on the Internet and I never see them.”
Graduation rates, crime rates, home prices, cost of living: The Internet brings it all to any executive who wants it at the tap of the keyboard.
So the face we present to the world is important.
But we also can’t get caught up in our looks, as it were.
“Something else that for some folks don’t realize: While we do have a wonderful community and a lot to offer, a lot of times, the decision-makers aren’t the ones who are going live here,” Luth says. “We can’t always just sell on it being a wonderful place to live. It does make a difference and it is very important, but a lot of time that’s not the guy making the decision.
“Now it does come into play when they look at the community as a whole because they do want to make sure that they can recruit good talent and their executives can come in and they have a good work workforce,” Luth says. “But we just can’t sell Pensacola based on being Pensacola. It has to be a good business location as well.”
That echoes the feedback that a panel of professional site selectors gave the crowd of economic development pros, business, civic and political leaders at the 19th annual Gulf Power Economic Symposium last week in Destin.
Woody Hydrick, partner and senior principal with Global Location Strategies in Greenville, S.C., told the crowd everything his firm does is statistics based.
“It’s one thing for a community to give you their perspective,” Hydrick said. “For us you have to prove it. We use uniform data sources to make sure that the recommendations we’re making to clients are fact-based.”
What turns Hydrick’s head? Things like labor costs, the quality of the labor pool and the scalability of the workforce.
“Can I hire 50, 60, 100 people?” he said.
Jeff Pappas with Cresa Dallas said, “Pensacola can’t compete against Orlando or Macon itself.
“Every city has two people in economic development: the idealist and the realist. One sees things, and one knows things. You need both.”
Which means our dreamers and our doers need to be on the same page. When they aren’t, well, you get things like the Pensacola Technology Campus, still empty after all these years.
Or the Community Maritime Park, with a leasing process that requires the patience of Job and the cunning of Keyser Soze to negotiate.
What does Luth say would make his job finding jobs easier?
Flexibility in the state economic development incentive program that accounts for the challenges that border areas like ours face. Because Luth competes with communities in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia more than he competes with Central or South Florida cities.
“One of the things a potential company needed was to send the employees to their other U.S. and international operations for training,” Luth said. “Our state programs don’t allow that. Or they didn’t at the time.”
“We’ve got a very good community, we’re very competitive,” Luth says. “We have had some great wins and we’re gonna continue to be successful but we’ve got to position ourselves to be more successful in the future.
“That’s focusing on a lot of things that you all highlighted with your reports, and the statistics that are out there. Then also continue and try to work with our state to make sure that our programs are as competitive as the other states’ programs that are out there.”
As Triumph Gulf Coast gears up for the task of doling out BP fine money to the counties disproportionately affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill, there was a lot of talk of wanting to see “big things” from that money.
Things, presumably, that ribbons can be cut in front of during an election cycle.
But it might do to consider a bit of advice from Hydrick.
“If I were you, I’d invest where you’d get a return on that investment,” he said at the symposium. “Look at why companies don’t locate here and use it to address those issues.”
Shannon Nickinson is the editor of PensacolaToday.com, a news and commentary website in Pensacola, Florida. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson.com. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
