Organization Promotes Portland
Published Mar 06, 2007
You can get there from here, but it’s a tad farther to the kangaroos of Australia than it is to the elephants of the Oregon Zoo.
When it comes to attracting new business, the Portland region has plenty to brag about: a well-educated labor pool, a strong and diverse economy, gorgeous scenery, and more.
The challenge is letting companies in other places know what they’re missing. That’s where Greenlight Greater Portland comes in.
This dynamic new organization, which includes civic and community leaders from Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties in Oregon and Clark County in Washington, focuses on coordinating economic strategy regionally. It was launched in January 2007 with $750,000 in startup funds acquired almost entirely from major Portland-area businesses.
Privately funded and privately led, the organization works in partnership with public agencies.
Leaders are still refining its objectives, but over-arching goals are to retain existing businesses while recruiting businesses from across the country to relocate here. “No other single organization in the greater Portland area is actively engaged in these efforts, and both are critical to our region’s future prosperity,” says Mark Ganz, chairman of Greenlight Greater Portland and president of The Regence Group of Blue Cross Blue Shield insurors. “Our business community must be actively involved, sharing accountability with existing public agencies.”
FILLING THE PIPELINE
The organization grew out of the area’s 2006 Regional Business Plan, which was coordinated by the Portland Business Alliance.
The plan established specific initiatives crucial to building a strong and sustainable regional economy. It stressed the importance of attracting traded-sector industry clusters – those companies, small or large, that sell goods and services primarily outside the region.
As a private corporation, Greenlight Greater Portland has certain advantages when it comes to marketing and CEO networking, says Jim Thayer, senior economic development manager for the Portland Development Commission, a city agency. “Businesses want to hear from other business leaders about conditions they would face,” he says. “There’s a certain credibility that comes from the private sector.”
Greenlinght Greater Portland “will be the group of people that goes out and identifies prospects and potential businesses that could be attracted to the Portland area – to fill the sales pipeline, if you will,” Thayer says. “It is then the role of the public sector to manage those projects, to bring to bear the public financial tools available and close on those deals.”
Fortunately, the organization has no shortage of good things to talk about.
HUB OF INNOVATION
The region’s many quality-of-life selling points are well known, including top-notch public school systems, a vibrant arts scene, natural beauty, abundant outdoor recreation options, a comprehensive public transportation system and sustainable development.
“What we need to better communicate is that this region is a hub of business innovation,” Ganz says. “Many of our companies are global leaders in industries such as apparel, high-tech, metals and manufacturing, medical research, advertising and agriculture.”
The region also is home to many industry “clusters” that outpace national performance measures, including forest products, creative services and transportation equipment.
And the metro area, with a population of just over 2 million, sports the nation’s fourth-fastest growth rate among college-educated 25-to-34-year-olds.
Coordinating economic development across the Oregon-Washington state line and across local jurisdictions is easier said than done, but this initiative came together in record time, business leaders here say.
“That’s one of the things that’s noble about this effort,” says Scott Campbell, publisher of The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Wash. “Trying to pull together as a region across all those boundaries and promoting all that this region has to offer – it will take the marketing of the region to the next level.”
A major challenge will be to identify the Portland region’s niche in the global marketplace, says economist Joe Cortright, vice president of the Portland-based consulting firm Impresa and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“This is an effort to work together,” Cortright says, “recognizing that the Portland-area economy is competing with other metro areas around the United States and, increasingly, around the world.”
Story by Rebecca Denton
Photo by Stephen Cherry
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