Mayor Lenny Curry can expect that some of the top recommendations for his economic-development priorities will be the need to score incentives deals for the best results and to improve the city’s marketing efforts.
A third but much less defined observation may be that the city needs to decide whether and how to proceed with a new Downtown convention center. The difficult-to-define aspect is how to pay for a $200 million to $500 million project.
“We’ll see where we’ll land on the convention center,” said former Mayor John Delaney on Thursday after the economic-development transition subcommittee he leads completed the sixth of eight meetings.
Facing a Thursday deadline to complete the work, Delaney said he will pull together over the weekend a couple of dozen observations and recommendations voiced at the meetings. He said he would confer with Curry and Chief Administrative Officer Sam Mousa.
Curry appointed 18 members to the subcommittee, which was briefed on several facets of the city’s economic-development efforts by those in charge of them.
Delaney said after the Thursday meeting that economic development worked well during the administrations of mayors Alvin Brown, who was defeated by Curry, and John Peyton, who preceded Brown.
Delaney served from 1995-2003, during an era of general economic growth, before Peyton’s two terms from 2003-11.
Peyton’s tenure included the economic peaks of the mid-2000s followed by the Great Recession of 2007-09, during which the city grappled with the souring economy, including sagging job growth.
The economy began to recover during Brown’s term, with unemployment dropping, employment rising, housing sales and prices improving and businesses growing.
Delaney said Brown’s economic development model of four components — the Office of Economic Development, the Sports and Entertainment Office, the Downtown Investment Authority and the JAX Chamber — “is probably a pretty healthy place for it to be.”
With the economy on firmer footing, Curry can expect both specific and general recommendations on how to assist job growth in all areas of town.
The group mulled over the best type of matrix that would score proposed economic-incentives deals, generally agreeing that a return-on-investment model would work best.
The group also discussed a GDP — gross domestic product — model that would involve determining the desired pace of growth, identifying the factors driving that growth and measuring the outcomes.
Delaney said post-meeting the city needs an overall more sophisticated scorecard that measures the pace of projects, such as job creation and payrolls over the long term.
The group stressed a need for flexibility so that deals aren’t eliminated because of a rigid formal structure or a frequent need to seek a waiver from City Council to bypass rules. Delaney said there was a need to keep it simple, but with caution.
“I want to resist the temptation where it’s so wide open that any deal will pass muster,” he said.
Over the first six meetings, several recurring themes emerged:
• A need to increase jobs in Northwest Jacksonville and other economically distressed areas. That includes recruiting companies to create jobs there but also encouraging residents and businesses within those areas to invest and expand. There also were requests for continued support of Brown’s Community Wealth Building Initiative Task Force.
• An economic incentives structure that supports jobs that pay lower to moderate wages so that more residents without high-wage skills can find employment and students and other young people can find work while they build careers. Most incentives programs focus on high-wage jobs.
• Proper tracking of economic-development deals to measure the long-term results of promised job creation, capital investment and other factors.
• A question of determining the level and sources of funding for economic-development incentives and projects.
• An appreciation and support for the economic-development contributions from sports and entertainment, whose events fill hotel rooms and restaurants, bring visitors Downtown and result in international exposure for the area through TV and other media.
• A need to better market and brand the city, along with the need for a clear city vision. That especially means the city needs to know what its “outward” face is to the world as well as its internal views on dealing with strengths and weaknesses.
• A desire to focus on Downtown development and redevelopment. That includes the InvestJax private investment fund that should be announced this summer in which urban core projects can access private financial support.
• A need for quicker resolution of regulatory issues, such as permitting and decision-making, and also more certainty, while maintaining environmental compliance and other factors that create quality of life.
• A review of unused or underused assets, properties and buildings around the city, some problematic, that could be re-used much more productively. The idea was advocated Thursday by committee member and former council member Elaine Brown. “There are actually also, Elaine, a bunch of privately held but abandoned buildings in the Downtown that probably need to be bulldozed,” Delaney responded.
• A continued look at parking availability and accessibility Downtown and its effect on business, visitors and employees.
Delaney said he would present his bullet-point list Monday for group editing. The meeting is 8 a.m. at his office at the University of North Florida.
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