In 2008, the Kenosha Area Business Alliance (KABA) engaged TIP Strategies to assist in the development of an economic development plan: Kenosha First.

After an extended period of stagnation in the 1970s and 1980s, Kenosha County has experienced strong employment and population growth since the early 1990s. The county benefitted from its location on Lake Michigan and I-94 within the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor. Its proximity to Chicago brought employers, workers, and residents to the county. Capitalizing on these trends was integral to the strategic direction employed by TIP. The plan was completed in September of 2009, and KABA has already reported successes based on our recommendations.


Creating Connections
Among the recommendations, Goal Four of our plan suggested enhancing connections within the county. This recommendation is a recognition that long-term economic vitality requires healthy and sustainable regional growth. As the commercial and residential center of Kenosha County moves westward, there is a danger the economic competitiveness of downtown Kenosha will weaken. We emphasized a retail strategy for existing business and for the attraction of new specialty retail boutiques in downtown Kenosha.

Making the Move
Specifically, the plan recommended that KABA encourage existing Kenosha County companies and retailers to establish downtown anchors. In response to the plan, KABA assisted one of its major employers, Jockey International, Inc., in considering a downtown location. Last month, Jockey opened the doors to the new 6,000 square foot Jockey Factory Store at 5500 Sixth Avenue in downtown Kenosha. KABA also announced its move to the same historic building. They are situated in the heart of downtown with beautiful views of Kenosha’s Harbor and Lake Michigan. According to the June 23 press release, KABA’s office will include the TDS Training Center, a name that recognizes a generous donation of cash and equipment from TDS, a local telephone and internet service provider and KABA member. In addition, the space will be used to showcase Lemon Street Gallery and to hold Gateway Technical College classes.

Congratulations, KABA, on your recent success and your new location!

See the full project description here.

Drug companies aren’t the only ones making money inventing new medicines for the market. A man in Massachusetts has brought three drugs to market almost on his own. His process is the same as the big drug makers, but he farms out each aspect of the process to independent labs and specialists. When the drug starts to succeed in trials, he sells it to one of the big companies.

Transcript:
Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And in a tough economy like this one, rather than fighting for a job, some people are simply starting their own companies. A pharmaceutical business might not sound like an easy one to set up, but there is a growing number of one-person drug-making companies cropping up across the country.

From member station WBUR in Boston, Curt Nickisch has the story of one man who’s already developed three prescription drugs on his own.

CURT NICKISCH: This is not what you picture when you hear corner office. Dennis Goldberg runs a drug company out of one corner of his living room.

Mr. DENNIS GOLDBERG (President and CEO, neXus therapeutics Inc.): It’s very different from the hermetically-sealed office buildings where, you know, you can’t open the windows. Here I can open the windows and get the fresh air coming through and it’s nice.

NICKISCH: Goldberg’s home nudges a cranberry bog. Each morning someone picks up his giant schnauzer so he can work in quiet for a few hours. The drug he’s testing is a cholesterol drug, for people for whom statins such as Lipitor don’t work. But Goldberg says he doesn’t need fancy corporate headquarters to develop another blockbuster.

Mr. GOLDBERG: Do we really need to build another big company? We need more drugs. So we’re just focusing on the drug part.

NICKISCH: Goldberg, backed by a few investors, is taking a drug that was discovered at a university in Alabama through the first round of human testing. To do this, you need scientists, you need laboratories, you need lawyers. So normally, Goldberg says, you build a building, outfit it with labs, and hire expensive people to fill it.

Mr. GOLDBERG: Normally you get this into a big company and you get all the bells and whistles and you’re spending all this stuff on overhead. You can spend easily 60, 80 million.

NICKISCH: But Goldberg’s only spending $6 million, and he’s not building anything. He’s the only full-time employee. So how does he do it? Well, he’s contracting out each step in the drug’s development process to someone else.

NICKISCH: At Charles River Laboratories outside Boston, a worker is tending to a six-foot-long plastic bubble. Inside, a medical experiment is being run on mice. This isolation chamber is just one of hundreds in this warehouse.

CEO Jim Foster says his company runs experiments for people like Dennis Goldberg.

Mr. JIM FOSTER (CEO, Charles River Laboratories): And they’re basically renting a bubble or a whole row of bubbles, or we hope a whole building of bubbles. But they don’t have to own the bubbles themselves. They don’t have to own the building, and they don’t have to employee the employees. We do that for them.

NICKISCH: So when Dennis Goldberg, the one-person drug company, is getting his drug researched at one of these contractors like Charles River Laboratories, he sits at home and works on other stuff. He files paperwork with the FDA. He negotiates with a manufacturer to make more of the drug, which he’ll need later on. He starts lining up medical clinics to do the human trials. So he doesn’t have to have all those folks on staff. He just cuts them a check.

That’s how Elizabeth Higgins got paid recently by someone like Dennis Goldberg. She’s the CEO of a contract research lab called GlycoSolutions.

Dr. ELIZABETH HIGGINS (CEO, GlycoSolutions): And we received the check in the mail a personal check from his Charles Schwab account. He’s paying for it out of his own money.

NICKISCH: Now, obviously this isn’t one of those work-from-home schemes you see advertised in the Penny Saver. Dennis Goldberg and most of the people doing this are former drug company executives. They’ve been through this whole process before. And you can’t do this just anywhere either. Most of these virtual companies are cropping up around Boston, where there’s a big pharmaceutical industry.

Mr. MIKE WEBB (Virtual Office 4 U): From top-flight intellectual property attorneys, project managers, labs, facilities – it’s all here available, really at a moment’s notice.

NICKISCH: Mike Webb is a former corporate drug executive who’s now providing services to a growing number of these virtual companies.

Mr. WEBB: We’re bringing people together at the right time at the right place. And then eventually we’re passing them on to much bigger companies that get them to the patients.

NICKISCH: Those much bigger companies happen to be desperate right now. Many are watching the patents on their best-selling drugs run out, and they need to bring new ones to market.

As a one-person drug company, Dennis Goldberg says he can not only bring a promising drug through the process cheaper, he says he can do it faster.

Mr. GOLDBERG: If it works, great. And if not, you know, the company just goes away.

NICKISCH: Well, Goldberg also loses the $6 million he and investors put into the cholesterol drug. But for the chance to develop a drug that will be sold to people around the world, that’s a risk he’s willing to take.

For NPR News, I’m Curt Nickisch in Boston.

Census suggests lack of enclave promotes intermarriage.
mySA by Elaine Ayala and Kelly Guckian.

San Antonio’s Asian residents are more likely to self-identify as being of more than one race or ethnicity than their U.S. and Texas counterparts, according to new 2010 Census data. The trend indicates not only intermarriage with whites and Hispanics since World War II, experts said, but more of a willingness or opportunity among Asians to intermarry outside their group.

Data compiled by the San Antonio Express-News points to the impact of a strong military presence in San Antonio over several generations, among them Anglo and Hispanic soldiers who brought home “war brides,” said Mitsu Yamazaki of the Alamo Asian American Chamber of Commerce, who studies demographic trends.
San Antonio stands out from other U.S. and Texas cities in another way that may fuel more intermarriage among Asians, said Texas state demographer Lloyd Potter: It doesn’t have an Asian enclave.

Dallas, Houston and many other cities have Asian residential and business areas. San Antonio’s relatively small Asian population has to look out of its group for partners, Potter said. “It suggests that in San Antonio, if you’re Asian, you’re more likely to interact with someone who is not Asian,” he said, and more likely to intermarry.

Potter said the new data may reflect both the post-World War II and more current phenomena. In San Antonio, 14.5 percent of Asians identified themselves as both Asian and white, and 3.9 percent checked off Asian and Hispanic, higher percentages than those of Asians in Texas and the United States. New population totals for Asians who are also African American or other races were not yet available. Statewide, only 8.3 percent of Asians identified as white also and only 1.5 percent as Hispanic also. U.S. figures are 9.4 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively.

Conversely, 75.7 percent of Asians in San Antonio described themselves as being of one race, while 86.8 percent in Texas and 84.7 percent in the United States identified as such. Yamazaki, director of corporate services for Austin-based TIP Strategies, noted an 84-year-old Japanese friend whose children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren identify themselves as Asian and white.

“Her child is half Japanese, but she’s more white than Japanese,” he said, speaking of her cultural connections. “Her children are totally white, but they’re still Asian, and their kids are more white than anybody you can imagine. But they are still Asian and keep some traditions.”

The new census data also delineate the ethnic breakdown of the city’s Asian population. The biggest group, which has more than doubled in size since 2000, is Asian Indian, at 20.5 percent of the Asian community. They’re followed by Filipinos at 14.7 percent and Chinese at 10.7 percent. The Chinese group grew overall but shrunk as a percentage of the Asian population, overtaken by Asian Indians. That was also the case among Filipinos, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Overall, San Antonio’s Asian population is still relatively small, representing just 2.4 percent of the city’s 1.3 million residents. Since 2000, however, the group has grown by almost 80 percent. The latest census data show 32,254 Asians in San Antonio, up from 17,934 in 2000.

Read more…

Plan to reinvigorate local economy faces many challenges

The Columbian by Aaron Corvin and Gordon Oliver

In many ways, the timing for a new countywide economic development plan couldn’t be better. Clark County’s economy needs a fresh look following the Great Recession’s smackdown that left the county with the region’s highest unemployment, a decimated housing industry, and a serious case of self-doubt.

Yet the Clark County Economic Development Plan, now in final draft form, arrives at a challenging time of leadership transitions and tensions over the direction of the county’s economic development activities. The recommendations offered by TIP Strategies Inc., the Texas-based consulting firm that prepared the report, won’t be easy to implement. They’ll require money, political will, and consensus about how county residents perceive their community and what kind of image they want to present to the outside world.

Even in the best of worlds, the road to recovery will be a long one. Perhaps a decade or more from now, business and community leaders will be able to look at seeds planted in 2011 as watersheds that helped the county build a more balanced economy, better able to weather the inevitable business cycles that are part of our rapidly changing world. But the consultants don’t pretend to have solutions to the short-term challenge that has left countless local families struggling to maintain their homes and make ends meet; indeed, they note that their recommendations are not focused on short-term employment gains but on long-term economic vitality.

TIP Strategies’ report is “very powerful and very complex,” said Steve Horenstein, a Vancouver attorney and longtime Columbia River Economic Development Council board member. “This needs to involve more than just the business community. It requires much broader buy-in and involvement from the community.”

Here’s a selective look and incomplete look at some of the more provocative challenges raised in the 127-page report, and some early reactions from the county’s business and community leaders.

Technology sector looms large
Consultants were clear that one of Clark County’s best hopes for a stronger economy was to build stronger links between the innovation-driven technology industry and two of its most critical government institutions, Washington State University Vancouver and Clark College.

The report’s top recommendation is to target growth prospects within the tech sector more narrowly to the information technology and software industries, with the ambitious goal of establishing the county as “a regional center of growth and innovation” in those sectors. It suggests a variety of collaborative efforts between the industry and the local colleges, including establishing a research park to make resources of higher education available to build innovative businesses.

These are big ideas, not likely to be easily enacted because of their potentially high costs in an era of reduced funding for education and other government services. WSUV has not yet reached critical mass in its programs, faculty, and student population. The county’s technology sector is slowly rebuilding employment to pre-recession levels, but is not in expansion mode. Industry leaders worry about other issues not discussed in the report, such as the potential for big increases in energy costs and the need for improved science and math education at the K-12 level.

Rob Bernardi, who is current president of the High Tech Council that represents 10 Clark County technology businesses, said that in the long term the report’s recommendations fall within the realm of the possible. University-based research centers have developed in innovation-rich cities around the nation, he said, and “there’s no reason why we in Clark County can’t do the same thing. With WSU we have a great foundation.”

Lynn Valenter, WSUV’s acting chancellor, echoed Bernardi’s optimism about the promise of greater university-industry collaboration. Like others, she said the report’s suggested strategies need a great deal of work, especially given the university’s youth and funding challenges. “All of these things are feasible but they are very complex and take time,” she said.

A bold new image
TIP Strategies makes it clear that Clark County must forge a distinct identity and a sharp message within the Portland metropolitan area and beyond. The consultants suggest the community promote itself “as a premier destination in the Pacific Northwest for high-quality talent, jobs, investment, and development.”

Few community leaders disagree that the county needs to forge its own self-image. The challenge, of course, is getting agreement on a message. That won’t be easy. Horenstein believes that local disputes on the Columbia River Crossing project about tolls and light rail have created a negative view within the Portland region about Clark County. And Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt says that in his travels outside the region, a mention of Vancouver gains recognition only when he tells people that his city is 10 minutes from Portland.

Other jurisdictions are far ahead in the image-building game. Take Hillsboro, Ore., for instance, home of Intel’s Oregon operations and known nationally as a technology hub. Its website pushes many pleasing messages: “Welcome to Hillsboro, the fifth-largest city in Oregon with a population of over 90,380 people. Best described as an uptown hometown, Hillsboro is a well-planned growing community with a strong, diverse economic base. We are the high-tech corridor for the state while, at the same time, farming and timber are important parts of our economy. Hillsboro is a safe and affordable community and a place that we are proud to call home.” Vancouver’s website offers only information about services, with no message about the city’s attributes. The current “Land Here, Live Here” campaign backed by Identity Clark County and other local business boosters builds on distinctive characteristics of Clark County’s cities and their proximity to Portland.

Ron Arp, a public relations consultant working with community groups on the region-wide “Land Here, Live Here” marketing initiative, believes that image-building message could be the foundation for implementing the report’s recommendations.

“I think we can easily organize and articulate our strengths around key business opportunities, including infrastructure, employment, training, and the like,” he said by email. “The ‘Land Here, Live Here’ campaign was designed with that flexibility in mind.”

Clark County Commissioner Steve Stuart offers this off-the-cuff take on a message for the county : “We have urban, suburban, rural, campus development, high-rises, ports, and industrial opportunities across the spectrum. We have a range of opportunities which serve individual needs.”

Effective leaders
The report also highlights the need for a unified leadership in moving forward with a new vision for building economic prosperity. It’s a concern shared by the High Tech Council’s Bernardi, who is president and chief operating officer for Kokusai Semiconductor Equipment Corp. in Vancouver. “If you’re going to do this right, it’s going to take a lot of capital and a lot of coordinating,” Bernardi said. “You have to ask, ‘Who’s going to pull this all together?’”

The consultants had reason for concern. Horenstein says the CREDC commissioned the report last year in part out of concern about what he calls the “restless natives” — cities and port authorities outside Vancouver who were frustrated with the existing economic development structure.

Now, the CREDC is searching for a new president to replace Bart Phillips, who resigned this spring. The private business group Identity Clark County will soon transition from longtime executive director Ginger Metcalf to Paul Montague, who is moving from the Greater Vancouver Chamber of Commerce. Meanwhile, the cities of Washougal and Camas, and the Port of Camas-Washougal have created a new economic development organization with former Camas Mayor Paul Dennis as its first director. To the north, Battle Ground long ago pulled out of CREDC and rumblings about creating a separate north county economic development have surfaced from time to time.

Eric Fuller, a commercial real estate broker with Eric Fuller & Associates Inc. in Vancouver and board chairman for the Columbia River Economic Development Council, said the person who replaces Phillips will be expected to transform the dreamy goals of the TIP Strategies plan into reality.

“We’re hiring a CEO to implement the plan,” Fuller said, adding that the CREDC — and Clark County’s other prominent institutions and leaders — will be accountable for not letting the plan gather dust.

Vancouver Mayor Leavitt says CREDC’s leadership transition should be a time for self-examination within the economic development organization. “This is an opportunity for CREDC to take a side step and evaluate its core mission and how efficient it has been and can be in future,” he said. “It’s a real opportunity for the board and the leadership of the board to improve as a result of the changes.”

Kelly Sills, Clark County’s economic development manager, believes the county is ripe for some of the changes outlined in the report. “The economy is looking better than before,” he said. “It’s a good time for change initiatives.”

CREDC over the summer will present the draft plan to city councils, the county commission, ports, business and civic groups and will host an open community luncheon some time in September. The organization’s board hopes to adopt the plan in late September.

Aaron Corvin: 360-735-4518 or aaron.corvin@columbian.com. Gordon Oliver: 360-735-4699 or gordon.oliver@columbian.com.

LOTS of states would love to be California and have their own little Hollywood. Film crews would then come to town and spend money in hair salons and hotels, and local politicians could pose with film stars. So why not call it “economic development” to justify the huge tax credits that lure film producers? As of last year, more than 40 states had such incentives, costing them a record $1.4 billion.

Even California itself plays the game, believing that it has to defend itself against the poachers. In 2003, when only a handful of states (principally Louisiana and New Mexico) offered incentives, California made two-thirds of America’s big-studio films. Now it makes far fewer than half. Film LA, an organisation that co-ordinates permits for film shoots in Los Angeles, says that without California’s own tax credit, “2010 would have been the worst year” since the mid-1990s for filming in Hollywood. As its marketing blog gibes: “It is extraordinarily unlikely that the 137 productions that filmed in Michigan since 2007 chose to shoot there for creative reasons, a favourable climate or a deep and talented film-crew base.”

All this costs money, which legislators volunteer on behalf of taxpayers. Many tax credits (a percentage of a film crew’s local expenditures) exceed the filmmaker’s total tax liability to that state. The credits have even become an industry unto themselves: brokers slice them into tranches and trade them. In Iowa filmmakers were selling their credits until that state shut its programme in 2009. Last month an Iowa judge sentenced a producer to ten years in prison for fiddling credits.

Incentives do not have to involve tax credits. Some states simplify the paperwork by just giving out cash (calling it “rebates” or “grants”). Others exempt film-makers from sales or hotel taxes or give them other perks.

All this is silly. First, as Joseph Henchman at the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan think-tank, puts it, even when a state succeeds in luring film crews, they rarely boost the economy or tax revenues enough to justify the costs of the incentives. Film companies usually import their staff (stars, stuntmen, etc) and export them again when the shoot is over. The local jobs they create (hairdressers, sound technicians, pizza deliverers) are mostly temporary.

Second, since virtually all states are at it, the programmes largely cancel out one another; no state gets a lasting advantage. The craze resembles a beggar-thy-neighbour trade war (with mutually destructive tariffs) or the federal tax code with its loopholes for every lobby and thus higher rates for all. In the language of cold-war nukes, it would be mutually assured destruction (MAD). The only winner is the film industry. In essence, a rich bloke in a Brentwood villa gets money from a poor taxpayer in West Virginia.

Fortunately, this has begun sinking in. Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey and Washington have recently ended, suspended or shrunk their programmes. Many others, struggling with budget deficits, are considering doing the same, investing the money in something permanent or even leaving it to taxpayers. “2010 will likely stand as the peak year,” thinks Mr Henchman.

via The Economist

Teamwork among a multitude of players could move Clark County toward prosperity

The Columbian

Anyone connected to the economic future of Clark County should pay close attention to the Miami Heat, a reverse role model when it comes to teamwork. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh arguably are the best threesome of basketball stars on any single team, but because the Miami Heat lacked teamwork, the NBA trophy was on parade in Dallas last week.

And until the strongest economic forces of Clark County collaborate more effectively, our community will not enjoy a full economic recovery and embark on a new era of prosperity. That was the biggest take-away from a recent report by a Texas-based consultant. It was good to get an outsider’s perspective, and TIP Strategies Inc. of Austin pulled no punches. With this county’s multitude of municipalities and government agencies, plus ports, educational institutions and economic development interests, we’ve got plenty of talented players. Getting them all on the same page — moving together aggressively — is the trick.

An emerging transition beyond traditional leadership could work in our favor. Crucial changes are taking place. In recent months, Bart Phillips has resigned as Columbia River Economic Development Council leader, and Ginger Metcalf has retired as director of Identity Clark County (replaced by Paul Montague). Hal Dengerink is retiring as chancellor at Washington State University Vancouver, and Larry Paulson has entered his last year as top official at the Port of Vancouver. Former Camas Mayor Paul Dennis is heading up a new economic development agency in east Clark County.

If all the new leaders don’t listen to each other and advance collectively, the consultant’s vision of local prosperity in information technology, health care and trade cannot unfold. They have all the necessary planks for the foundation of teamwork: no state income tax, a growing health care sector, a diversified business base, a regional appeal to educated young workers and a strong regional transportation network of ports, rail, airports and highways.

Also, there is WSUV’s expressed commitment to economic development, described by interim Chancellor Lynn Valenter: “The recognition of WSUV as a research institution, and that part of what research institutions do is help drive local economic development, is wonderful. On the larger, level it’s kind of a perfect match.” That’s a good start toward building the business-oriented research park that TIP recommends.

Those are Clark County’s assets in the drive toward economic recovery. But here are the area’s challenges: chronic high unemployment, an aging inventory of office buildings and a relatively small share of college graduates. We also have fallen short in the effective branding of our county as an economic player. A new identity is needed beyond just the bumper-sticker mentality. “This is an appeal for a fresh look at marketing and positioning,” the TIP report explained, “captured not through tag lines but through a better understanding of what attracts people to Clark County and what business growth would keep them local.”

A couple of recommendations are eyebrow-raisers. Tying “infrastructure development” to proceeds from Clark County’s real estate excise tax will not — and should not — be viewed favorably by local elected officials. That pie already has too many pieces. And the belief that some form of new taxes could support the research park does not make sense during the lingering economic crisis.

But there’s no doubt that Clark County’s powerful players are not playing powerfully together. With so many new leaders stepping into the process, there’s ample reason to believe an aggressive, innovative approach could move our community ahead of others as the recovery takes form.