Today the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and Google announced a new partnership and unveiled “Tools for Online Success,” an array of online resources and training designed to help small business owners harness technology to grow their businesses.

The “Tools for Online Success” site (http://www.google.com/help/sba) features tutorials, video testimonials, and tips from savvy small business people who have leveraged the web to become more efficient, more cost-effective, and more successful.

“The SBA is pleased to partner with Google to put these important tools in the hands of small businesses across the country,” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills.  “As the web evolves and consumers adapt accordingly, we know that more customers are finding traditional ‘Main Street’ businesses online. With these tools for online success, we can ensure these small businesses reach new markets and customers so they can continue to create jobs.”

“One fifth of searches on Google are related to location, which shows that people are looking to the Internet to make decisions about where to go and what to do in their daily lives,” said John Hanke, Vice President of Product Management, Google. “We want to connect our users with the businesses that provide the goods and services they need, but the first step is for those businesses to have an online presence. We’re excited to team up with the SBA to make that process easier for business owners across the country.”

Google and the SBA unveiled the partnership during a forum held today at the SBA’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., and broadcast live online to press and small business owners across the country.  Susan Holt, Principal and Owner of CulinAerie, a recreational cooking school in downtown D.C., shared her experiences working with the SBA and explained how she has used online tools like Google Places and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to attract more aspiring cooks.

Holt is just one of the many small business owners from across the country who are sharing how they’ve used online tools to reach new customers. Many are featured in the video testimonials found at the “Tools for Online Success” site.  Each video documents the unique success stories that these small businesses have created using online technology:

• Masha Hleap-Hershkovitz, Owner of Fuego Mundo in Sandy Springs, Georgia, uses social media to request feedback from restaurant customers for improvement. Ms. Hleap-Hershkovitz even used social media to name her restaurant.  “We bounced back and forth with a potential name for months, and we were kind of bottle-necked,” she says.  “We put it out there [on social media], and it came back 70 percent ‘Fuego Mundo.’”  Visit http://www.fuegomundo.com.

• Sean Vahey, Owner of Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream in San Francisco launches new menu items and cultivates a worldwide following for his company’s unique ice cream flavors using social media and Google Places. I don’t have a lot of time do marketing,” Mr. Vahey says.  “I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and reach out to people.  I’m able to get on the computer and two minutes later, I’ve gotten the word out…Our Google Places page is important, because it’s got all of our information in one spot – our website, our phone number, you can see where we are on a map, and you can even get directions.” Visit http://www.humphryslocombe.com.

• Sumul Shah, Owner of Lumus Construction in Woburn, Massachusetts, uses its website and online maps to research projects all over the United States and show potential customers examples of its past work.  According to Mr. Shah, “Customers can see and visualize the types of projects and the complexity of the work we do…In the future, our website will not only talk about how much renewable energy we’re building, but we’ll actually quantify it.  We’ll be able to take live data coming from all the wind turbines and solar panels that we’ve installed, simulate it, and be able to report not only how much energy we’re producing, but also what the environmental benefits are.” Visit http://www.lumusinc.com.

• Aliyyah Baylor, Owner of Make My Cake in Harlem, New York City, redesigned her website to display vivid imagery of its baked goods.  Make My Cake is family-owned and operated, and Ms. Baylor says, “Our website is an extension of our business when it’s too busy for someone to answer the phone. It’s our virtual salesperson, and that is very key.”  Visit http://www.makemycake.com.

• Mandy Scott, Owner of Mandy Scott Flowers in San Francisco uses highly targeted online advertising to help her premium flower boutique compete with national brands on a small marketing budget.  She says, “We are tiny compared to the big players.  I can’t hope to compete with them on any kind of national scale, but I feel locally we do very well.  Showing up in both natural and paid search results is important for us because we want to be on a level playing field with the big guns.”  Visit http://www.mandyscottflowers.com.

• Jessica Soler, Owner of Salon Red in Decatur, Georgia, uses a website and local online listings to help her customers find salon locations and book appointments.  She says, “A great example of how the web helps Salon Red is we were nominated with one of the local papers to be a ‘Best Of’ salon in Atlanta, and tons of people went online to vote for all of our locations.  We just were flooded with business, and it all came from online.”  Visit http://www.salonred.com.

• Christopher Bartlett, Owner of Skaters Landing in West Hartford, Connecticut, uses online videos to teach customers from all over the world how to properly shop for and use ice skating products.  “We really were able to reach out to new markets,” says Mr. Bartlett.  “I don’t look at [our online efforts] as a place to go to and hard sell, but to really talk with people and answer some of the questions that people might have.”  Visit http://www.skaterslanding.com.

• Louis Rossetto, CEO of TCHO in San Francisco brings a start-up mentality to his company’s premium chocolate production.  TCHO uses web analytics to constantly improve its website’s layout, ensuring consumers are engaging with its products in the most effective way possible.  “You can’t be a modern company without using modern tools, and online is just fundamental to being in business today,” says Rossetto.  “Our website represents our direct link to our customers.  We use it to explain who we are, engage our community, and it’s certainly a storefront for us.  You’re inviting the whole world into your store if you do that online.”  Visit http://www.tcho.com.

Continued success stories like these are the goal of the Google/SBA partnership.  Visit the “Tools for Online Success” website for a full run-down, but here are a few easy tips all small business owners should be using:

• Establish your online presence. One out of five searches on Google are related to location.  Most local online listings such as Google Places are free, and if your business doesn’t have a website, there are ready-made site templates and free hosting services that make establishing an online presence easy.
• Use free marketing to reach customers. You can build a fan base with free services like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter that keep your customers in-the-know about new products or specials and aware of promotions. These services are great “word of mouth” platforms – where a customer following you might tell their friends about your business.
• Know your customers.  Easy to use web analytics tools can tell you a lot about your customers by analyzing what search term brought them to your website or what they look at while they are there. This information can help you make smart decisions about what you feature and what search terms you should run search ads on.
• Keep an eye on the latest trends.  The growing popularity of smartphones means that more and more customers are searching for local information on the go.  This makes it all the more important that a business’s online presence be accurate and up-to-date. You can link to your menu, give users driving directions, and even post digital coupons.

by Tracy McKenzie, Esq.

Nevada state minimum wage is going up.  The Nevada Labor Commissioner issued a State of Nevada Minimum Wage Annual Bulletin on April 1, 2010, announcing the increased state minimum wage rates as follows:

• For employees to whom qualifying health benefits have been offered by their employer, the minimum wage rate is $7.25 per hour
• For all other employees, the minimum wage rate is $8.25 per hour

The increases in the state minimum wage rates become effective July 1, 2010.

The Nevada Labor Commissioner also issued a State of Nevada Daily Overtime Annual Bulletin the same day, announcing the hourly wage rate an employer must pay an employee to avoid the Nevada overtime pay requirements.  Effective as of July 1, 2010, the minimum hourly wage an employer must pay in order to be exempted from the payment of state overtime is as follows:

• For employees to whom qualifying health benefits have been offered by their employer, $10.875 or more
• For all other employees, $12.375 or more

The federal minimum wage rate is still $7.25 per hour and employers are required to pay overtime in accordance with the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

Download the Minimum Wage Bulletin

Download the Daily Overtime Bulletin

If you have any questions or need further information, please contact Tracy McKenzie at (775) 828-0800.

© 2010 Drinkwater Law Offices

I’ve had some free time to catch up on my reading and two books that I’ve recently finished I recommend to anyone interested in larger economic development issues.  Both of these books, “The Other America:  Poverty in the United States” written by Michael Harrington and first published in 1962 and “The Post-American World” written by Fareed Zakaria and published in 2008, are two books that wouldn’t normally come across the reading list of a class in economic development or on any economic development professionals bookcase – but they should!

 The first book, “The Other America:  Poverty in the United States” (I recommend the version published in 1981 with subsequent papers written by Michael Harrington himself), is a masterful account of poverty in the United States and what it means to be poor in one of the wealthiest and most economically developed nations in human history.  Throughout his book, Harrington goes on at length discussing and describing the physical, emotional, and psychological torment the poor have historically and in contemporary times endured in this country.  Although I am disappointed that Harrington spends very little time on how we, as a society, might solve the problem of poverty, and fails to really develop a well thought out policy agenda that we might implement, his accounts and conclusions provide an eye-opening insight into a part of American society that has and continues to be invisible to most.

Harrington makes several points that anyone in the field of economic development, or anyone interested in economic development, should take to heart – I will mention only a few of them here.  First, Harrington points out, over-and-over again, that there is a big difference between being born into poverty at the “right time” (i.e. when the economy is doing poorly) and being born into poverty at the “wrong time” (i.e. when the economy is doing well).  Harrington argues that anti-poverty legislation, and legislation designed to enhance the economic well-being of individuals, receives political attention only in times of economic depression, recession, or downturn.  Job-bills (i.e. public monies for retraining, workforce development programs, or even small business development) are only considered when people are increasingly losing their job.  Rarely do our policy makers engage in comprehensive economic development debate on a regular basis that would help everyone – even the most poor – regardless of macro-economic characteristics.

Second, a growing number of the poor – when Harrington first published his book in 1962 and even today in more contemporary times – are “forced into poverty” due to economic obsolescence.  Economic obsolescence is the regrettable cost of Joseph Schumpeter’s concept of “creative destruction”.  Schumpeter, an economist and political scientist, argued that radical innovation needed to sustain long-term economic growth was the “creative destruction” of obsolescent technologies, goods, services, and even methods of production.  Lacking in Schumpeter’s work is an answer to this question:  “What happens to the 40-year old or 50-year old or even 60-year old who is too old to be retrained in a new industry after the old one is no longer economically viable but who is not wealthy enough to retire?”

As a society, we too often say that the poor are poor because they refuse to get a job.  Rarely do we, as a society, demand of our policy makers comprehensive job retraining programs that would smooth the transition of individual workers from an outgoing industry and into the emerging industry.  For example, the recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – the federal “economic stimulus” plan passed about a year ago – made lost of money available for renewable energy development.  But it made almost no money available for training oil refinery workers to work in geothermal plants.  I guess the oil refinery workers will have to join the ranks of the poor when oil goes the way of the dinosaur.  As part of our economic development plans – nationally, at the state level, and at the local level – we need to develop measures that effectively combat and minimize the affects of economic obsolescence if we are to have any success in actually reducing the number of poor in this country – a point that Harrington makes at length.

Third, and finally, Harrington argues time and time again that the solution to poverty will not come from politics.  I think it’s a fair statement to say that Harrington was not overly thrilled with either of the two dominant political parties in the United States – and I’m pretty sure he’d be just as disappointed with both parties today as he was in 1962 and then in 1969 and 1981 when he wrote two follow-up essays to his original publication.  Although Harrington hints at the possibility that poverty might never be fully solved for, he put the stock of his faith in education.  Harrington believed, and his book makes the point, that the best chance of the poor to not be poor anymore was through an education that offered some real opportunity for some measurable level of general upward mobility.  Harrington’s argument in a nutshell:  Put money in the pockets of the poor by providing an education that gave the poor a fighting chance in becoming employed!

The point that Harrington makes over and over again – and the one that was most important for me – is that the “other America” is invisible to mainstream America.  Harrington argues that the main reason why poverty is allowed to endure in the most prosperous nation in Earth’s history is because the “rest of us” don’t see the poor.  And as a result of this invisibility, we don’t demand that our government – national, state, or local – develop and implement policy that efficiently and effectively solves poverty once and for all.  Think about this – in 1962 Harrington estimated that there was between 40,000,000 and 50,000,000 million living in poverty in the United States (I used the zeros to nail the point home).  According to the United States Census Bureau in the 2000 U.S. Census, there were 33,889,812 people living in poverty in the United States in the year 2000 – almost 40 years after Harrington first wrote “The Other America”.  And the 2000 figure doesn’t include those populations that don’t often get counted like the elderly poor, the poor who live in residentially overcrowded housing, or the homeless.

My point is this.  In contemporary times, we don’t write economic development policy for the poor.  The fact that the number of poor people living in the United States has gone relatively unchanged for almost 40 years (probably longer), is testament to the colossal failure of our national, state, and local economic development policy.  If our economic development policy doesn’t help those that are least fortunate and that are in most need for public economic development-oriented policies that actually create mid to high skill and paying jobs and that offer individuals meaningful opportunities for general upward mobility, than it doesn’t matter if we are opening new shopping centers, building new sports stadiums, or creating new hotels and convention centers.

The second book I’d like to recommend for those interested in economic development is a book recently written by Fareed Zakaria.  Zakaria’s book, “The Post-American World”, is not about the decline of the United States globally – per se.  Instead, it focuses about how the rest of the world – nations like China and India and even the recently revitalized European Continent through the European Union – is beginning to develop and, in some ways, catch-up, to the United States politically, militarily, and especially economically.  Zakaria also spends a great deal of time talking about America’s role, as the last true superpower, in this new more globally integrated and, dare I say, “equal” world.

There are a lot of points that Zakaria makes throughout his book that I simply don’t have the space to go into any amount of detail in given the limited space I have available for this blog.  It’s enough to simply say that Zakaria has written enough to make anyone interested in America’s political, military, and economic future glued to the pages of “The Post-American World”.  Because I’m interested in economic development, it is Zakaria’s comments that pertain to economic development in the United States that I will talk about here.

In Chapter 6, “American Power”, of “The Post-American World”, Zakaria uses an exceptional array of qualitative, anecdotal, and quantitative analysis to dispel the myth that America, in the beginning of the 21^st Century, has already passed by it most glorious days.  In fact, Zakaria points out that America’s long-term economic dominance and leadership in the world will continue as long as we, as Americans, can continue to answer one simple question:  “What is America’s competitive advantage?”  (Chapter 6, pg. 209).

As economic development policy makers, professionals, and practitioners, no other question so occupies the mind.  We are on a constant quest – nationally, at the state level, and especially at the local level – to ascertain what a target areas “competitive advantage is” and how we can economically profit from it in order to create mid to high skill and paying jobs that offer individuals meaningful opportunities for general upward mobility, provide a stable tax base to fund public services, and improve the area’s overall quality of life.  Zakaria puts competitive advantage, quite properly, at the forefront of the discussion about what a post-American world will look like.

Policy makers at all levels of government in the United States (national, state, and local) should pay extra special attention to this point specifically – Zakaria points to two specific competitive advantages that will, if properly nurtured, ensure American economic leadership in the world for the next century:  1) an education system that teaches people to think and innovate, and 2) a “can-do” American sprit that has endured since colonial times.  Let’s look at each of these two competitive advantages and how they relate to economic development a little more closely.

First, Zakaria points to the innovative and free-thinking emphasis of America’s educational system as one of its main competitive advantages.  Sure there are problems – most notably for Zakaria is that there is incredible disparity among public schools especially at the primary and secondary levels.  But, as Zakaria points out, the American educational system as a whole – but especially in the undergraduate and graduate levels of colleges and universities in the United States – is the envy of the world for one reason:  IT TEACHES PEOPLE HOW TO THINK.

Whereas the rest of the world emphasizes memorization and test taking, students in American schools are encouraged to take risks, think outside the box, question authority, and develop creative and innovative solutions to whatever problem the student wants to think about.  Zakaria writes, “While America marvels at Asia’s test-taking skills, Asian countries come to America to figure out how to get their kids to think.”  (pg. 194).  Another quote form Zakaria might be more illuminating, “…simply changing curricula – a top-down effort – may lead only to resistance.  American culture celebrates and reinforces problem solving, questioning authority, and thinking heretically.  It allows people to fail and then gives them a second and third chance.  It rewards self-starts and oddballs.  These are all bottom-up forces that cannot be produced by government fiat.”  (pg. 195).

In short, economic development practitioners, professionals, and policy makers must make education a central aspect of our economic development goals and objectives.  I’m not saying that education should trump other approaches.  In fact, it shouldn’t!  Instead, we have to better consider how we can merge our educational approaches with our workforce development strategies and our technology-led development strategies and our real estate and reuse development strategies and all the rest.  Education and other economic development strategies are NOT in competition with each other.  They aren’t even two sides of the same coin.  They are just the SAME coin.

Secondly, Zakaria muses about the power behind America’s “can-do” attitude.  I really don’t want to give away much, if any, of Zakaria’s writing about this particular competitive advantage.  I smiled and chuckled as I read this section only because it is often so true that it is often overlooked by those of us in the field of economic development.  The reason for America’s economic near 200-years of general economic prosperity?  We have simply willed it to be true!  Even those not born in the United States are part of this legacy.  From the time before the United States as actually the United States, immigrants from Europe and then from across the world have come to the United States with a single, solitary idea in mind:  make one’s life better.  Through perseverance, hard work, and determination, Americans (used here more as a description of a personality type than a nationality) have carved one of the most prosperous existences the world has ever known.

Zakaria brilliantly points out that, in spite of America’s ability to will itself into prosperity, almost every American generation has predicted its own future decline in the face of global pressures.  Since 1945, Zakaria identifies at least four separate “waves” of American pessimism and fear of American decline in the world since 1945.  First, Americans were generally horrified when Sputnik was launched in the late 1950’s.  In the yearly 1970’s, high oil prices and slowed economic growth in the United States convinced many that Western Europe and Saudi Arabia were the “powers of the future”.   Third, in the mid-1980’s, everybody believed the Japanese would be the “technologically and economically dominant superpower of the future.”  (pg. 210)  Again, someone remind me how the turned out?  And of course, the fourth wave today centers on the rise of everyone else – but the rise of China and India specifically.  But Zakaria reminds us that historically, “…none of these scenarios came to pass.  The reason is that the American system was proved to be flexible, resourceful, and resilient, able to correct its mistakes and shift its attention.  A focus on American economic decline ended up preventing it.”  (pg. 210-211).

Although neither author, Harrington or Zakaria, likely intended either of their books, “The Other America:  Poverty in the United States” and “The Post-American World”, to be considered masterful works in the field of economic development, both of them truly are!  Both books offer a tremendous amount of insight into how we can better craft and execute economic development policies and programs.  As an economic development student and professional, I highly recommend both books to anyone who has an interest in economic development policy.

Back on March 19^th I outlined the general theory behind neighborhood and community based economic development strategies.  Now, after a few short diversions, I’d like to return to the topic of neighborhood and community development by outlining some specific strategies.

The first specific neighborhood and community based economic development strategy is better known as “Community Building”.  According to the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), “Community building strategies focus on harnessing existing networks of social capital to encourage community empowerment and capacity building; this approach channels community assets such as the skills of local residents, the power of neighborhood associations, and the resources of public and private organizations, to solve problems”.

Since the end of the “federal urban renewal” era in the mid 1970’s, local governments across the United States almost universally turned to property-based approaches to local urban revitalization and economic development.  The lasting legacy of federal urban renewal was a tendency to overlook the non-property based approaches to economic development vital in building vibrant and dynamic communities.  A new hotel does not a community make.  A new condominium tower does not a community make.  A new convention center, a new office tower, or even a new shopping center by themselves does not a community make.

Yet, time and time again, local governments, now primarily responsible for local urban revitalization and economic development efforts, tend to invest all their economic development efforts in attracting new retailers or new hotel operators.  It’s time to reintegrate the non-property based approaches – approaches that attempt to build and channel existing community assets including the skills of local residents and even the power of neighborhood associations – into our ongoing economic development efforts.

“Place-Oriented Strategies” are the second set of neighborhood and community based economic development strategies.  Place-oriented strategies, according to the IEDC, “…focus on the community’s physical resources.  Inner-city communities targeted for economic redevelopment typically suffer from inadequate infrastructure, and dilapidated residential and commercial buildings.  Place-oriented efforts seek to improve buildings, roads, utility and telecommunications service, as well as transform brownfields into usable sites”.

Notice how neighborhood and community based economic development strategies – via community building and place-oriented strategies – attempt to merge both property-based and non-property based strategies into a single strategy.  Whereas community building focuses on the non-property based side of economic development (by empowering neighborhood associations and groups and by enhancing the skill sets of individual neighborhood residents), place-oriented strategies focus on the property-based side of economic development by improving the “basic infrastructure” that economically viable communities need to be economically competitive.  In simple terms, community building focus on eliminating or at least mitigating SOCIAL blight and place-oriented strategies focus on eliminating and mitigating PHYSICAL blight.

Place-oriented strategies, according to the IEDC, should focus on resolving the following “common and prominent” problems that tend to retard the economic viability of neighborhoods and communities:

• Limited availability of appropriate development sites.
• Failing infrastructure.
• Inadequate public services.
• Environmental contamination of structures and land.
• Inadequate housing stock.
• Dilapidated commercial areas.
• No or limited sense of neighborhood identity and/or character.

“Business-Oriented Strategies”, focused on providing financial and technical support to neighborhood businesses, are the third set of neighborhood and community based economic development strategies.  Business-oriented strategies, according to the IEDC, by providing financial and technical support to neighborhood businesses, “…helps businesses in distressed communities face the challenges caused by lack of financial and technical support.  Examples of business-oriented efforts are micro-business support, groups, business skills training courses, and revolving loan funds offering loans considered too small or high risk for conventional banks”.

“Healthy” neighborhood commercial areas typically create jobs, increase the local area tax base, keep money in the neighborhood by encouraging area residents to stroll, socialize, and shop in the neighborhood, improve the image and quality of life of the neighborhood, and even attract shoppers from outside the community.  Local governments have a strong incentive to offer financial and technical support to emerging local area businesses.  In order to do so, local governments must employ a broader set of business-oriented strategies that encourage new business formation and the growth and expansion of existing local businesses.  In short, business-oriented strategies are designed to target, eliminate, or at least mitigate ECONOMIC blight.

Notice that business-oriented strategies focus primarily on how to create new businesses while also growing existing businesses – i.e. the use of micro-business support programs and groups, business skills training course, and even the use of revolving loan funds geared toward the needs of small to mid-size local area businesses.  Place-oriented strategies focus primarily on how to improve the physical appearance and quality of local area communities and individual neighborhoods – i.e. infrastructure improvement programs, improvement in existing telecommunication and utility services, and even the removal or rehabilitation of physically dilapidated structures.  Community building strategies focus primarily on empowering area residents and neighborhood groups in order to build the workforce that new and existing businesses need to survive and grow.

This is the comprehensive nature of a proper neighborhood and community based economic development strategy.  Simultaneously, a comprehensive neighborhood and community economic development strategy incorporates property-based and non-property based strategies designed to build businesses, build individual workforce skills, and improve the general physical appearance of local neighborhoods and communities.  Economically vibrant communities depend on a local government’s ability to effectively combine each of these three specific sets of strategies into single neighborhood and community based economic development strategy.  Without proper consideration of each individual specific set, much of the effort to stimulate local levels of economic activity will likely fail.

Earlier this morning (April 1, 2010) at the Downtown Improvement Association’s (http://www.renodowntown.com/) monthly membership meeting, Nevada Secretary of State, Mr. Ross Miller, made a presentation about the 2010 Census and various economic development services and resources available through the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office.  Here are a few highlights from his presentation.

First, it’s important to you and to the entire State of Nevada that you fill out the 10-question census form that you should have already received in the mail by now.  If you haven’t filled it out, or if you have lost it, you can go to the following website, http://nvsos.gov, to make sure that you get counted.  According to Mr. Miller, Nevada’s response rate during the 2000 Census was approximately 66% – one of the worst response rates in the country.  This cost the State of Nevada millions in federal dollars that could have been used to help stimulate local, regional, and state-wide levels of economic activity!  Don’t let Nevada down – fill out your census form and send it in right away!

Second, Mr. Miller also pointed out the various economic development and business oriented services that the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office provides – many of them online and at no cost.  Many of these services can be accessed directly from the Secretary of State’s website:  http://nvsos.gov.  One such program is the New Business Portal which can be accessed online at the following website:  http://whynevada.com/newbusinessportal/.

Third, Mr. Miller spoke at length about why Nevada is an excellent place to do business.  Many of Mr. Miller’s points can be viewed at:  http://whynevada.com.  This site, maintained by the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office, is an excellent resource for those businesses interested in relocating, expanding, or starting a new business right here in Nevada.  Information and technical advice is divided into several categories including Commercial Recordings, Capital Markets, Business Courts, and Nevada’s Low Tax Climate.  A link to the New Business Portal and the Secretary of State’s main website are also available through the “Why Nevada” website.

All in all, Mr. Miller provided some very useful and very interesting information about the State’s ongoing economic development efforts.  Thank you Mr. Miller.  And to everyone reading – remember to fill out your Census 2010 form and return it in the mail as soon as possible!  It’s only 10 questions and it only takes 10 minutes (I attest to that as I have filled out my Census 2010 form and I have already sent it in).  But it could mean millions of dollars for Nevada.  So fill it out and return it now!

By the way – I promise to talk about Neighborhood and Community Development strategies in my next post.  I thought that the highlights from Mr. Miller’s presentation merited another delay.

In my last blog I promised to talk about the specific approaches and strategies that typically comprise a comprehensive neighborhood and community economic development plan.  If you would indulge me this one time, I promise to come back to the topic of neighborhood and community development in my next blog.  For now, I’d like to briefly touch upon the current climate since the House of Representatives voted on healthcare earlier this past week.  I first want to make it clear that these are my ideas and my ideas alone.

Over the past few days, since the passage of the Federal Government’s 2010 healthcare and insurance overall legislation, a small few have taken it upon themselves to express their opposition to the recent federal legislation with acts of violence, intimidation, and bigotry.  As someone who has, over the years, become increasingly interested in public policy, I wanted to take this brief opportunity to express my disappointment in those that would use such atrocious tactics to argue a point.

Over the past year or so, I have tried to use this blog to express different policy options in the field of economic development.  At times, I have argued in the positive for certain ideas.  At other times, I have argued in the negative by pointing out certain practical flaws in the reasoning behind certain public policy proposals made by both community and political leaders.  I have agreed and disagreed with people on the left, people on the right, and people in the middle.

Disagreement is healthy.  Debate is healthy.  But acts of violence, intimidation, and bigotry are decidedly not healthy.  These acts do not, in any way, add to the civil discourse that needed and genuine policy debate requires.  I understand and sympathize with those who feel frustrated and that their voices don’t count.  At times, especially about my own ideas regarding economic development policy, I have felt equally frustrated.  But I have tried to use means such as this blog to discuss and air-out my ideas.  I, however, do not understand nor do I sympathize with those who allow their frustration to become irrational expressions of anger and hatred.  Given all the challenges that we as individuals and as a civil society face today, we, as a society, cannot allow the small few who would steal away the attention from these important issues with acts of violence, intimidation, bigotry, and ultimately, cowardness.

As a community, as a state, and as a nation, we are struggling to find new and innovative ways to stimulate long-term, stable, levels of economic activity in order to ensure that the generations that follow us can enjoy a standard of living greater than the present one.  A 21^st Century economy requires 21^st Century approaches.  The violent and pointless approaches that a small and insignificant few have chosen to employ have no place in contemporary civil society.  They should be left upon the trash heap of history – in the 20^th, 19^th, 18^th and every other past century where all bad ideas deserve to rest in peace.

In the wide world of economic development, neighborhood and community development is both frequently used and largely misunderstood.  In short, we know what it is (sort of), but we really don’t do a very good job in doing it.  According to the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), “Neighborhood development focuses on the economic aspects of distressed neighborhoods – retail sector, market potential, employment opportunities, and available workforce – that can be developed to help neighborhoods compete and contribute to the urban economy.”  That’s a bit of a mouthful. In an nutshell, neighborhood and community development is usually known by other, more familiar names – chiefly “urban renewal” from about the mid 1950’s to the mid 1970’s, and “redevelopment” since the mid 1970’s up to the present day.

But calling neighborhood and community development “urban renewal” or “redevelopment” grossly understates the vast complexities of neighborhood and community development.  Neighborhood and community development is much more than building a convention center or a hotel or a new condominium tower.  It’s also much more than just building grand public plazas or intimate pocket parks.  As the IEDC points out, “The focus (of neighborhood and community development) is also on the economic development activities – job creation, business attraction, and retention – that can be targeted to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.  The important issue is to increase employment by creating jobs and retaining jobs.”

The focus on “creating jobs and retaining jobs” is often one of the greatest oversights of what we call “redevelopment” today.  Gone is the concept of neighborhood and community development – i.e. the focus on creating jobs and retaining jobs – and in its place has taken the all important need for local redevelopment agencies and local governments to generate as much property tax revenue and sales tax revenue as possible.  Now a lot of people will say that redevelopment is a valuable economic development tool for local governments.  And I’m one of them!  I am an unapologetic supporter of local redevelopment.  But I would like to see local redevelopment agencies and local municipal/county governments think harder about the types of jobs their economic development efforts are creating.  Distressed neighborhoods – those neighborhoods that are most likely to be in a redevelopment project area – often need new retail opportunities and new retail opportunities and development will certainly create new jobs for the residents of these distressed neighborhoods.

But the residents of these distressed neighborhoods, and the residents of the entire community beyond the distressed neighborhoods, need more than just low paying and low skill retail sector jobs.  For the most part, retail sector jobs are often low skill, low paying and generally do not offer individuals a direct means of general upward mobility nor do they directly improve a community’s overall quality of life (those of you that have read many of my previous blogs will recognize that last sentence as the general “goals” of any comprehensive economic development strategy).  In order to create mid to high skill and mid to high paying jobs at the neighborhood and then community level that offer individuals meaningful opportunities for general upward mobility and improve a community’s overall quality of life, local municipal and county governments need to evolve their current local redevelopment efforts by embracing a more broad neighborhood and community development strategy.

To do so, according to the IEDC, “Economic development activities at the neighborhood level deal with both place and people.  The fundamental underpinning of neighborhood economic development is building assets both individually and collectively for the community.”  Because many neighborhoods in any given urban environment are primarily residential in nature, local municipal and county governments must devote their economic development attention to increasing wealth at the individual household or family level.  This means that the place-specific focus of municipal/county government economic development efforts in the past (i.e. via the small geographic concept of a local redevelopment project area that might be 200 acres within a municipality of several thousand acres for example) have to be widened to comprehensively understand how one neighborhood relates and interacts with another within entire communities and how job creation community-wide and workforce development community-wide can translate into real and tangible gains in personal wealth at the individual household or family level.

To do so, local municipal/county governments must also embrace wider non-property based approaches to economic development.  As I mentioned above, local governments (especially today given shrinking municipal/county revenues and budgets) are so focused on generating as much publicly collected tax revenue as is practically possible that they have all but abandoned wider non-property based approaches.  Instead, local governments tend to offer every kind of incentive they can think of in order to attract a new retail shopping center or auto-dealership or hotel or convention center to their community in the hope of generating the maximum amount of property tax revenue and, most importantly, new sales tax revenue.  These property-based approaches certainly create new jobs and a TON of new sales tax revenue – a fact that local municipal/county governments won’t let us forget about as they always brag about the 125 new jobs at the new big-box retail store opening or the new 200 jobs at the new local sports stadium being built.  But what they don’t tell us is that the average wage paid for each of those 125 or 200 or whatever number of new jobs created is about $9 per hour – hardly enough to send your kids to school or buy a house or buy a car or do just about anything with.

The exact means or specific strategies within a comprehensive neighborhood and community development plan I’ll address in my next blog – for now, it’s important to just understand what neighborhood and community development is and why it’s important.  And neighborhood and community development is important for the following reasons.

First, as the IEDC points out, “Neighborhoods are the building blocks for healthy, thriving, vibrant towns, cities, and regions.”  If one neighborhood begins to decline, the adjacent neighborhoods begin to decline and the entire community might not be all that far behind them.  No doubt about it – shopping centers, auto-dealerships, hotels, convention centers, and even new sports stadiums are very important parts of developing a healthy and vibrant town, city, and/or region.  But these property-based approaches represent only a PART of a more comprehensive and successful neighborhood and community development plan.  We have to figure out ways of increasing net and individual levels of wealth for those individuals and families living within our community at the neighborhood level.

Second, as the IEDC points out, “With governments dividing and partitioning the greater city into neighborhoods for the sake of more focused and targeted community development, every development project or economic expansion campaign is likely to have a significant impact on at least one neighborhood.  It is important to understand the dynamics of how neighborhoods work, how they can be protected and preserved, and what can be done to promote growth and renewal.”  I really can’t say it better than that.  In order to understand the specific impacts of specific economic development (property-based and non-property based) policies, programs, and/or projects, we also have to understand what’s going on at the neighborhood level.  In the past, I’ve preached the importance of a regional approach to economic development.  That said, we can’t forget about the neighborhood-level.  Because if we do, our regional economic development efforts will be for nothing.

Small businesses and non-profits are beginning to realize that they don’t necessarily need a custom built CMS system to run their website. Why not use a state-of-the-art publishing platform that focuses on aesthetics, web standards and usability – and not to mention… it’s FREE?

Blog or use it as a Content Management System, WordPress is the next best cost effective web solution.

No need to purchase additional software, your site is accessible wherever there’s internet connectivity and most importantly, you own it. No monthly leasing payments.

There are also hundreds of Free and inexpensive WordPress Themes available to choose from that represent several business styles such as: Magazine Editorial, Corporate, and Creative, Retail, Technology, Nonprofit, entertainment and more. You can make simple changes to represent your brand and brand messaging without having a fully custom built website. Example: http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/

The WordPress administrative area is easy to use to make updates to both your posts and pages. Posts are listed in reverse chronological order and are also displayed in RSS feeds. Pages are static and not listed by date. Your navigation is typically referencing a static page; whereas your posts reference the latest information sorted by date.

WordPress also keeps costs of having a dynamic website minimal because of the long lists of plugins that are available to customize your needs. There are ecommerce plugins, fundraising plugins, social media plugins, All-in-One SEO plugins, sitemap plugins, gallery plugins, calendar plugins, event plugins and more. Example: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/browse/popular/.

Take a look at WordPress as a solution for your business or non-profit. View their Showcase and the many businesses and non-profits that are currently using WordPress as their choice for a publishing platform.

Non-profit Examples

• Walk to Washington
• Joint Use
• American Red Cross Online Disaster News Portal
• Philadelphia Neighborhoods
• Boys and Girls Club of the Midlands
• BigGovHealth
• More Examples

Business Examples

• Great Basin Arts & Entertainment
• Susan Hill Pr
• Westward Strategy & Design Group
• Cardinal Law
• Bartlett Architecture

You can download WordPress for free http://wordpress.org/download/.

——————————————————————–

If you would like to learn more about WordPress as a solution for your Reno Business or Reno Non-profit, please give Kristy Crabtree a call at (775) 626-8330.

On Sunday, February 28, the 21^st Winter Olympic Games, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, came to an end during a spectacular closing ceremony viewed by millions across the world and tens of thousands in attendance.  For many, the Olympics are a celebration of sport.  For others, the Olympics represent the very best possibilities of humanity.  And for some others, the Olympics are viewed as a way to radically transform a community seemingly overnight.  In a February 2010 article published in Planning:  the Magazine of the American Planning Association, James Krohe Jr. writes, “The International Olympic Committees likes to portray the Games in terms of sporting ideals.  Since the 1960’s or so, entrepreneurial mayors tend to see them in terms of development deals.”

In the weeks leading up to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics and the days since the closing ceremony, there has been a lot of talk and speculation about what the Winter Olympics could do for the wider Reno-Tahoe region in-terms of successfully revitalizing a depressed tourism industry and encouraging significant economic development in both the short and long-term.  Many have suggested that the return of the Winter Olympics to Squaw Valley in the near future could help revitalize tourism counts, help souvenir shops, and help pack area bars and nightclubs.  But as James Krohe Jr. writes, “Unfortunately, hosting the Games gets no medals as an urban development strategy.  Host efforts tend to be over promised and underfunded, and seldom achieve the goals that local organizers set out.”

I understand the “nostalgia” of having the Winter Olympics return to the Reno-Tahoe region but it’s important to keep in mind that it would be just that – nostalgic.  It is highly unlikely that the Winter Olympics would lead to a renaissance for tourism and economic activity throughout the region.  In fact, it could very well leave the local communities involved saddled with billions (that’s right – billions) of dollars of debt to build new facilities and infrastructure that will never be used once the Olympics leave town.  Keep in mind that Squaw Valley already hosted the Winter Olympics in 1960.  Did those Olympics lead to a hundred years of prosperity and uninterrupted growth?  No.  In fact, only 30 years later, during the spread of Indian gaming in states like California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico and Arizona, the wider Reno-Tahoe region has experienced considerable decline in its annual visitor counts.  And in-terms of general economic growth, northern Nevada has continued to trail the nation in several important economic categories.

The Winter Olympics is not a solution to current short-term economic problems nor is it a long-term plan for long-term economic prosperity.  Urban revitalization and economic development do not come out of a bottle – it happens incrementally and over time.  Successfully urban revitalization and economic development occurs by building a mid to high skill level workforce through education and workforce development programs.  Communities committed to long-term urban revitalization and economic development are also committed to developing home-grown firms and businesses through a comprehensive small business and entrepreneurial development strategy that generates mid to high paying jobs that positively contribute to a community’s overall quality of life.  Authors and experts who have studied the economic impacts of hosting the Olympics such as John R. Gold and Margret M. Gold (Olympic Cities:  City Agendas, Planning and the World’s Games 1896-2012, 2007), Holger Preuss (The Economics of Staging the Olympics:  A Comparison of the Games 1972-2008, 2006), and Christopher Shaw (The Five Ring Circus:  Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, 2008) have almost universally concluded that hosting the Olympics is not a substitute for proper urban planning and economic development efforts.

In many cases, the initial economic impact of hosting the Olympics is far less than what organizers had hoped for and the hosting local communities tend to take on huge amounts of debt for facilities and infrastructure that will quickly deteriorate once the Olympics have passed.  According to Krohe Jr., the failed Chicago bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games asserted that the Summer Olympics would pump approximately $13.7 billion into the Chicago-metropolitan economy.  But an independent analysis conducted by Anderson Economic Group projected that the 2016 Summer Olympic Games would only generate about $4.4 billion in overall economic activity with the majority of it coming from additional tourism and infrastructure spending in Chicago and Cook County. 

In Sydney Australia, the Australian national government spent nearly $1.6 billion on infrastructure designed to support the 2000 Summer Olympics in anticipation of a tourism boom.  Turns out, according to Krohe Jr., Sydney’s gross domestic product, as a direct result of the Summer Olympics, rose only by about one percent.  In fact, tourism throughout New South Wales, of which the City of Sydney is the provincial capital, has increased at a rate less than the rest of the nation since the 2000 Summer Olympics.  In Athens Greece, the City of Athens spends nearly $100 million a year in just upkeep of the venues used during the 2004 Summer Games.  And for Beijing?  Although official estimates are hard to come by, it is estimated that the Chinese national government spent an estimated $40 billion to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.  In all of 2009, the “Bird’s Nest” stadium, which cost an estimated $500 million to build, hosted just one event – an opera.  These three cities, along with Barcelona Spain and Montreal Canada, are still paying off tremendous amounts of debt that have hamstrung, not helped, their local and regional economies.

The recent Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics is a unique case in that the City of Vancouver, its partnering local jurisdictions, the province of British Columbia, and the Canadian Federal Government, really didn’t shell out a lot for new facilities.  Take for example the following venues.  BC Place was the home of opening/closing ceremonies.  It’s also the ongoing home of the CFL BC Lions football team.  Canada Hockey Place was the home of ice hockey – it has been and will continue to be the home of the NHL Vancouver Canucks hockey team.  UBC Thunderbird Arena was home to women’s ice hockey.   It has been and will continue to be the primary hockey arena for the University of British Columbia.  Vancouver Olympic Center was home to men’s and women’s curling.  Although it is a new facility, it was built with the intention of replacing an aged and deteriorating community center.  Some have suggested that the Reno Events Center could be a good venue for Olympic curling.  Problem with using the Reno Events Center is that it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to retrofit the facility in order for proper chiller equipment and flooding equipment to be installed.  Also, the Reno Events Center could be nearly 20 years old by the time Reno-Tahoe hosts a Winter Olympics.  Who knows what the costs of renovation to accommodate the Olympics will be then.  In the end, neither Reno nor Lake Tahoe or any of the surrounding areas have the needed facilities already in place to host a Winter Olympics.  It would take billions just to build the facilities – not to mention the infrastructure needed to move millions of people around for a few weeks.

I had the pleasure of attending the Vancouver Winter Olympics for a few days.  I also have attended the Salt Lake Winter Olympics in 2002 and the Calgary Winter Olympics in 1988.  I absolutely enjoyed all three Olympics and I look forward to attending more in the future.  But as an economic development professional, I’m not at all convinced that the Winter Olympics is either an urban revitalization panacea or urban economic development instant cure for our region.  The Olympics is a celebration of sport.  It is also a celebration of local and regional culture and pride.  The cities that have done well with the Olympics in the past – Vancouver, Barcelona, Los Angeles – had a long-term vision for their communities that did not necessarily include hosting either the Winter or Summer Olympics.  It’s okay to go after the Olympics for nostalgia purposes as long as we keep in mind that the Olympics should never become a substitute for true urban revitalization and economic development policies, programs, and practices.

Guest Author
Len Stevens, Executive Director
Sparks Chamber of Commerce
re-posted from www.sparkschamber.org

When I first moved to this area in the 1990’s, I was a small business owner just like many of you, successfully running my own pizza place. Pretty soon, the competition moved in – places like Bully’s, Joe Bob’s and Sneakers. Specifically, they all moved in between our store and the softball fields. If you’re a parent with kids in sports you know that softball teams and fans are a big demographic at a pizza place. I quickly learned that I would have to up my game to stay in the game.  I learned that if I didn’t leave the store and go out to those softball fields every night, talk to the teams, hand out coupons and make my business known, than somebody else was going to do it and get their business instead. By making an effort to develop those relationships I was able to receive and maintain their loyalty as customers.

This is why it’s disturbing to me when I see small business owners who never leave their stores. I usually hear this as a reason for not attending the dozens of events and programs that the chamber offers every year: “I just can’t leave the store – I’ll lose money.” My response to that is: “You can’t afford not to leave the store!” If you leave the store you could be at a chamber event with up to 300 people in the room and make 4-5 quality connections. How many quality connections will you make sitting behind a counter waiting for them to come to you? This doesn’t just apply to chamber events either. I hear stories all the time from the business owner who goes to watch his son play softball, sits next to someone, starts talking business and makes a connection.

This is how you build a client base, using the same timeless principles of creating trust and interpersonal relationships that have always existed in business and always will – digital age or no digital age. Recognition of your business and your name by word of mouth is much more readily received by others because they know and trust the individual they’re hearing about you from. It’s all about building your business, one loyal customer at a time.

My father taught me, “It is better to serve 1 customer 100 times than 100 customers 1 time.” That is how really successful businesses are built, even during tough economic times. People still have needs and the toughest economy in the world is not going to eliminate those needs. Customers are drawn to the people who go the extra mile to service their needs. You can’t do that by sitting in your store. You do that by leaving the store and building relationships.

- Len Stevens

www.sparkschamber.org