EDC quarter two update for MOU and Penny for Pasco

1:11:58All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay, um my my 1115 time certain is not here yet, so we will go ahead and jump over to Um Mr. Cronin and we'll get the update.

1:12:13Pas the soldier.

1:12:15Well

1:12:15perfect. Good thing I didn't leave, she would have chased after me.

1:12:20Um again thank you for the opportunity to present. I'm Bill Cronin at Pasco EDC. I'm here to present our quarter two update for our MOU and our Penny for Pasco agreement with the Board of County Commissioners. In the interest of time, I'm gonna go pretty quickly here. You should have in your packets the metrics behind these results. But before I get to the results of Q2, I just want to share with you a couple things because I'm still really excited about it. Next time I report to you, I'm gonna be telling you

1:12:50about two awards that we got last week at the Florida Economic Development Council's annual meeting down in Portland. Charlotte. And uh though both of those were related to marketing. One was for marketing our Ready Sites program and our new 3D videos. You might recall when we first uh came out with one of the videos, we showed it here at the Board of County Commissioners. Well, we've done that with all the sites now, and we got an award last week, uh statewide award for that video. And then second

1:13:21Recently, we got an award for um something called Co-Starters for Causes. And I don't know if you recall back about a year and a half ago at our annual awards, I mentioned that our nonprofits were having trouble keeping up and scaling with the growth that they had in this county. So we funded the first cohort of co-starters, and that's the curriculum that we use for our startup businesses and our incubators. For those nonprofits to help them scale so

1:13:51that they could actually meet the need of this growing community. And because it was such an innovative process in partnering with co-starters, we got an award for that as well last week, too. So really proud of my team. The last couple of years that we've been there, we've came back with good news. We've had scholarship winners, we've had workforce development. Development professionals of the year at that conference. And this year we are also joined by Derek Berger and Steve Smith from the County. So again, team sport, making sure that we're

1:14:21all focused on economic development and it's paying off. They're they're talking about y'all around the state. So quarter two you'll see cookies and dirt. Uh the two don't go together normally, but we had but Bauduco's groundbreaking uh in quarter two and you can see in the background the label. That day was a a great day for all of us because uh they had lots and lots of cookies obviously. Uh but we also got news that they're gonna be expanding yet

1:14:52again. Into a larger footprint, which is included in some of our wins here. So I shared with you that the job numbers are still low. We've got two projects that have not reported their final numbers yet out of those six wins. I anticipate that's probably over 500 extra jobs that will go in there that will get us closer to halfway to the goal where it's where we. should be halfway through the year. But the other news is that with six wins, that

1:15:22means we're also focused on even the smaller companies too. We often get accused of just working with the big companies that hire hundreds of jobs. It's really important for us to work with the smaller companies as well. And they're still coming and the pipeline is uh is robust, 125 active projects right now, 161 leads. Of those 125 projects, I'd say we've got about 20 that are close to the finish line. But I am here to report there is a

1:15:52pause right now with a lot of companies pulling the trigger on their investments. And I think a lot of it has to do with the the politics that we're seeing both locally and federally. A lot of people are unsure what the markets are gonna do, and especially the institutional capital. We're we're seeing less influx or less impact from institutional capital and a lot more private investment that's coming in these projects. So when you see new new companies coming in, think

1:16:22about where they get their money from. And how that money gets here and uh sometimes it is impact by national news. So we're keeping an eye on that. That's one of the two things, well that's one of the several things that keeps me up at night, is uh is our reactivity to outside circumstances that we don't necessarily control here. Um but still getting the right mix in terms of diversifying the economy, uh, and we're still working with our local businesses. And that's again where we spend most of our time. You you all have seen the groundbreakings,

1:16:53the ribbon cuttings, but about 80% of our time is still with existing business. And workforce is still the number one thing that most businesses are interested in is where am I getting my talent from? What does that look like? How do I prepare for the future? And they should. That's our best resource that we have in this county. Telling the story, 3.59 million in year-to-date earned media value, and that's again where other people are telling our story, not us. Again,

1:17:23we're the hired help, so anytime we get other people to tell our story, it means that much more. They expect me to say nice things about Pasco, but when a newspaper reporter writes nice things, that's really good for us. Us. You'll see that jump up next quarter because during that uh economic development week last week, we had another 103,000 impressions and 870 engagements online last week. That means that people that we were talking back and forth with, so they were active

1:17:53about Pasco County. continue to see website hits on uh most of our our landing pages for buildings and sites and that's good because that's we want them looking at our product and why they want to move here. And we still have really good followers on social media. But social media, most of it is for our locals so that they know what resources are available to them, not necessarily for people outside looking to move here. Trade events, getting the word out and with our stakeholders. Last

1:18:24quarter we attended 21 trade events and three conferences and seminars and then eight presentations during that three-month period to industry groups and organizations. We're up to 94 investors. And that's the private sector investors that offset what we get from the public side, from yourself. And four of our newest investors are Habitat, Touchpoint Medical, Saddlebrook Resort, and Bank

1:18:54of Tampa. And right now we're up to 45 policy council members, which is also a record for us. You remember back in the day we had maybe five. And this is uh the group that helps us to steer our legislative agenda, which uh uh this time of year is kind of busy. Um upcoming events September 4th, and this is always the Thursday after Labor Day, our annual awards, and we will be back to Saddlebrook. So uh Saddlebrook will be ready for us. We'll be back. Um we're all

1:19:24pretty excited about it. There'll be a different layout obviously. and um uh nominate committees uh companies if you haven't yet thus far uh for awards and that'd be your small, medium and large companies. Uh onto the penny for Pasco. The Ready Sites program I mentioned continues to get hits. We continue to get visits. 11 site inquiries this last quarter, 13 RFPs that we included those sites in. So when somebody says,

1:19:55hey, we want to move our facility to Pasco County, what do you have? These are going in those RFPs in response to them. International program. We attended the Select USA Roadshow in Brazil and uh that was seven different uh cities in Brazil. It was kind of exhausting, over fifty-nine meetings uh during that that time, but they were lined up because they heard about what Baduco had done. And the US embassy said, hey, here's a good

1:20:25example of how Brazilian investment in the United States works. And they all said, Well, we want to go to Pasco County. So we had a really full dance card when we got there, which is fantastic. Also had our growing global event celebrating the International Trade and Tourism Day that was held at Starkey Market this year. and then um our global Tampa Bay trade mission to Mexico City. Is there somebody talking? No, you're right. Okay. Okay. Um to Mexico City. And that was

1:20:55with our partners at Global Tampa Bay, Hillsboro, and Pinellas County. That was on the trade side. In a couple of weeks, we'll have the Foreign Direct Investment Mission, which Pasco will be participating in with elected officials from all three counties, and that'll be to London the second through the fifth.

1:21:13Continue to counsel companies on trade. And enhanced marketing. We launched our ready site videos for the rest of the ready sites that I mentioned. And working with the founders of Smart Start. We call them founders now, not just startups. They founded companies to get more testimonials out from them so people know where they can get that assistance. Workforce continues to work with Career Source. We just released our survey for our annual workforce survey, and that's to understand the hiring trends of what the needs are of our employees,

1:21:43employment, employers.

1:21:48And then uh Smart Start uh had a a bunch of events. So we had our uh food extension uh day out at the County Extension Office at our food incubator, Epic, that we did with the county. Um it's always a good day to wear your stretchy pants and get lots of good food, lots of free samples. Um I love that stuff because that's your your small mom and pop businesses that are doing what we do. Do best, and sometimes that's growing stuff and cooking stuff and eating stuff. Um, we hosted Grow Pasco

1:22:18at St. Leo, our largest one to date, and that was an all-day event at the wellness center out there. And then uh we also had partnered with uh Canary Detections, which is a uh one of our Smart Start members and exhibited at At Synapse and held uh um a seminar at Synapse, which is the big IT summit in the region. Lots of events though, Smart Start. 407 people this last quarter, 50 events. We're

1:22:48up to 43 incubator members, and that's over the three incubators in the county. And two microloans out the door already this year. Again, they couldn't do that if um if we didn't have that loan available. These are companies that uh are turned down by banks. They're unbankable. So thank you again for all that you continue to do to support uh the work that we're doing. And uh it's good to know that you all have our back and that we're in that team sport together. As I mentioned before, it is

1:23:18a a full contact sport when we look at uh competing with the other regions and uh the sixteen thousand other agencies in the United States that are all going after the same business. So thank you again.

1:23:30Thank you. Um board members, any okay?

1:23:33Bill uh might not be the most time of the place, but Sort of hearing uh about data centers popping up and maybe looking at Generally what they I don't know if there were any interest in coming into our area. But what's interesting to me with the data centers is all the ancillary jobs that come with those centers. So I didn't know if E D C has been approached or Put any thought on those if if they're worth

1:24:02shooting net. Data centers absolutely are something that one, we're gonna need more and more of with all the AI and everything that uh we're using our tech for. Um but the biggest issue that all of us have in Florida is that we've got power. It's just spread out everywhere right now. And most of these data centers, in order to build the size of the That we want in our county are gonna need for one of those utilities to create a generation facility just for that data center. We do wanna make sure that

1:24:32we reserve enough power for hurricanes and things like that. So, one of the things that is is kind of a chicken and the egg here is the data center needs to sign an agreement saying they guarantee they will buy this power, and the utility signs an agreement. And says, okay, we will build a generation facility. But in such a competitive uh industry, nobody's willing to sign an agreement ahead of time until they somebody says, okay, here is a place for you with the generation. Uh Florida doesn't

1:25:03have any major data centers, and part of it's because of our geographic uh positioning that historically people said, Oh, it was too hot or we had a threat of hurricanes. Well, that's not really an issue that much anymore. We do need it, and I think there's a a real interest from the governor's office also to make sure that we have our own, that we don't rely on Georgia and Atlanta and places like that to to store our data. This is starting to become a competitive thing. So very much on our radar

1:25:33screen.

1:25:34Yeah.

1:25:34So which

1:25:34corridors you think would be best to market? Trinity area down fifty four, fifty-two, seventy-five.

1:25:41It depends if it's one that uh people come to actually visit uh their shelves of of racks of servers. Um sometimes you've got people that come in and they wanna service the actual equipment there. Sometimes they wanna be out in a bunker type of atmosphere where there's no one around, no one to bother and um they're safe and far away from everything. And some of the big ones fall into that category where they really want to be out uh somewhere away from the general population. I would say on first glance, so an easy

1:26:11answer would be anywhere along uh major highways and railroad, anywhere that you can run fiber. So fiber has to get there. So if you run it along the uh uh in infrastructure, uh it makes it that much easier for them. And of course workers too can drive on the road. Interesting. Thank you, Bill.

1:26:30Commissioner Oakley

1:26:33two calls for the International Economic Development Council of NACO. The second one was on data centers and it was uh a commissioner from Loudoun County, Virginia. They have two hundred data centers and a hundred and seventeen more in the pipeline.

1:26:49Yeah. Yeah. If you're around Washington D C you're gonna have a lot of data centers.

1:26:52It actually is a problem for them.

1:26:54Yeah.

1:26:54So um I But I'll I will I will get those they're taped. I'm gonna send those out. I'm gonna send both of those those uh calls out because it's fa fascinating what those counties have gone through. Um But yeah, we I'm sure we could land a couple. couple. Yeah, a couple would be good, right? And any other? Any other? Not didn't wanna be for it. Okay.

1:27:20Okay. Um Bill, again, great job as we we talked earlier. And you mentioned that high tech were at like a four point eight percent. Um Commissioner Starkey mentioned about the New York getting the um

1:27:32They got the chip.

1:27:33The chip.

1:27:33Yeah.

1:27:34So depending on how much space they need, you know, one of the things I think we've talked about before is like trying to get one maybe at that Hudson Industrial Park that's trying to come to life. Um that's got two hundred and ten acres it turns out. Uh and we could put h housing right around it as well. Is that Big enough? Is it too big? Is it something that could possibly go there? For not d not data center, for a chip factory.

1:27:56Chip factory, yeah. I would I would I would watch the chip factory uh announcements very carefully. I'm not sure they're all gonna come through the same way they were announced during the last administration. Um I know the folks up in Onondaga and They are in uh Senator Schumer's district and uh he was very much a part of of that legislation. I think that we need to make sure that if there is something that's gonna benefit our community, um whether it's chips, whether

1:28:26it's data, whether it's anything um that is forward thinking, we've got the product available for it. It's just a matter of making sure that we protect the the Industrial land around it and make sure that we don't have so much residential encroachment in those areas. So to answer your question, yes.

1:28:44Like Live Local could do to us?

1:28:45Exactly. And and uh keeping an eye on things like Live Local. Uh we we've worked five years to get these ready sites up and going and changing the culture of land ownership so that people preserve land for industrial development, for job creation. To lose it on short, you know, legislative actions that might just help one part of the state after we put in that much time really hurts us. I think the best way we can protect that is to continue to focus on these ready sites, maybe

1:29:16even go out and look at an industrial authority. to actually preserve some of this land to prevent anybody from from taking advantage of it. But any any industry, whether it's chips, data centers, uh I think we're pretty well situated, but we again we gotta keep our eye on the ball.

1:29:32Okay. Uh as far as the Brazil group, uh as far as making that trip, I just wanted you to know we've got a paddle tennis at the Scholarfest coming up at Sunwest Park. So that should be a a What do they

1:29:42call that? Pedal? Pedal.

1:29:44Padal. Padal Play. So paddle tennis, whatever.

1:29:47Yeah.

1:29:47So that that's going on there. And it may be some well no it may be something advertised with the Brazilian people. Here's what's going on here. So it could be a beach volleyball tournament too, but just for them, I think it's where it started, I guess. So they may be intrigued to come up. Yeah.