Hey Zinzendorf, maybe we should change the header to State of the City so as to update the thread from year to year. Here's WSJ/Camel City Dispatch excerpts from the State of the Community event held Tuesday at the Hanesbrands Theatre in front of a packed house. I was in attendance. Guess the takeaway was somewhat neutral, with a recounting of the great projects going on tempered by the continuing struggle to generate more robust jobs growth & putting a dent into the area poverty rate.
Joines stated in the past five years we have seen our population grow from 229,617 in 2010 to an estimated 239,629 in 2015- a 4.2% increase. He described our growth as “moderate” and “manageable”. The City’s workforce has grown from 306,400 to 320,500- a 4.6% increase. This is something we have done better when compared against other North Carolina cities. For comparison the state average was 3.4%, Greensboro was 4.5%, and Raleigh was 3.6%. Joines pointed out that while sometimes the number of new people in the workforce can actually make the unemployment number rise, overall our unemployment number has been falling. In February 2014 the unemployment rate was at 6.6%. By February of 2015 is had fallen to 5.5%, and then saw a much slower decline until March of 2016 when we posted at 5.2%.
I for one believe that the goal set by the Alliance/Chamber/City of having Winston-Salem be one of the top 50 metro areas in the country by the end of the decade was way to aggressive considering that we were positioned at 145 when the goal was set. Perhaps a goal of reaching the top 100 would have been more achievable. To get in the top 50 Winston-Salem will have to create just over 27,000 net new jobs over that time period, or about 5,400 jobs per year. It was presented that between 2010 & 2015 we generated a
net gain of 7,500 jobs. That is well below the 5400 jobs annually that need to be produced in order to achieve the 2020 goal! The county added 2,715 jobs from September 2014 to September 2015, a 1.5 percent growth rate that would add only 13,575 jobs by 2020. Contrast that year to year jobs growth with Guilford County adding 6,310 jobs, and even Buncombe and New Hanover — counties smaller than Forsyth — added 4,834 and 3,452 jobs, respectively.
Although thinking with Buncombe and New Hanover especially, how much of those jobs were created in the low wage hospitality sector. One could also question Guilford's numbers since there have been a number of new hotels coming on line in that eastern county.
Joines stated that this future economic development would be created by focusing on three of our major assets: the Wake Forest innovation Quarter, Whitaker Park, and fostering our entrepreneurial culture. Regarding fostering the local entrepreneurial culture, Five key efforts to foster and encourage entrepreneurship were named by the Mayor. The Dioko Health Ventures Accelerator which has a goal of securing $25 million to use as seed money had an early stage funder in order to foster expansion and innovation in our “local health care entrepreneurial ecosystem.” The fund’s managers will work closely with Inmar Inc., the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, local universities, regional academic medical centers. The Flywheel Ventures Fund has $350,000. The Mayor indicated that planning was underway for a minority business accelerator, that a study of our strengths and weaknesses had been completed, and that a best practices study of St. Louis, Missouri was complete.
An update of activities in the Innovation Quarter. He stated that the Bailey Power Plant Building project was underway. Construction of the new WFU medical building has begun. The building of the Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering is underway. The financing needed there for a parking deck has been secured at both the city and the county level.
Looks like that will get started in the next few months, before Fall maybe? And the Mayor said that the Northern District of the Quarter, or Phase 2, is in the initial recruitment phase. Currently there are 3,200 jobs in the IQ. By the end of 2017, 400 new jobs are expected to be created. Currently there are 5,800 students in the IQ, by the end of 2017 they expect as many as 7,000. Sixty-one companies are operating in the IQ right now with a projected 66 to be in place by the end of 2017. Currently there is $563 million dollars invested in the Innovation Quarter. By the end of 2017 there will be an estimated $800 million.
It was also commented on that the sites in the IQ along Research Pkwy by B-40/US 52 are identified as ideal locations for recruited HQ type businesses. During WSBI's Bob Leak's presentation, he indicated that one of the city’s major needs continues to be sites for industry. If Caterpillar, a major local manufacturer, were looking today at a site in Winston-Salem, Leak said, “we would have nothing to show them.” He announced that with the recent agreements with the City & County contributing funds, that a new street called Enterprise Drive in Union Cross Business Park is getting underway, opening up some additional acreage for the placement of a speculative building in the park that should be ready by 2017. Also, with the monies paid back by Dell, that options had been secured for, I believe, around 100 acres or more to place additional industrial buildings on. They seemed to have set up an agreement with a unnamed developer who would step in and purchase & build a building should we land another big Caterpillar/Herbalife prospect. But Leak pointed out that the Whitaker Park plant complex, being donated to the city by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., brings the promise of 1.7 million square feet of industrial space that the city can shop to business clients after renovations starting in 2017 transform the space.
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). Additionally, Pepsi Bottling should be adding those jobs that were promised with the expansion out in Union Cross along with Inmar additional headcount. There are a couple of other companies that I don't recall that are adding as well.