WILSONVILLE – If the Portland region is going to succeed in creating new jobs, it's going to need to think a little differently about approaching planning new employment lands. And, those employers will need to collaborate to create efficiencies in their own systems.
So said a panel of experts assembled by Metro on Tuesday as part of its "Building Tomorrow's Jobs" forum, held in conjunction with the Clackamas County Business Alliance and the Westside Economic Alliance.
A group of about 150 planners, elected officials and business representatives attended the morning session, at a conference center in Wilsonville. A couple dozen came back to the Metro Regional Center for afternoon charettes on planning for specific areas.
Employers, to attract top-tier candidates for jobs, need to be "hip, green and urban," said Bert Gregory, CEO of Mithun, a Seattle-based architectural firm. "You need all three of those to win the talent wars, and two out of three to place."
But Gregory seemed to warn that that's not just an admonishment for employers. Cities looking to attract those employers, Gregory said, should keep in mind what employers will be thinking about as they look to recruit.
He pointed to Google, which is working with Mountain View, Calif., to transform the suburban office park that houses the company's headquarters into a town center with streets, cafes and housing to fight a talent war with tech firms based in urban San Francisco.
"The new frontier is the neighborhood scale," Gregory said. Cities, serving as a convener with property owners, can turn islands of energy usage into systems like district heating and resource recovery. He pointed to efforts underway in the Lloyd District as an example of that.
Cities need "new models of governance in order to operate these kinds of systems," he said, using tools to "help bridge the gap between a short term interests and create a return on investment strategy with long term public benefits a neighborhood system can offer."
Similarly, said Andrew Mangan, the executive director of the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development, cities and regions can work to create efficiencies in the manufacturing and business sector. He gave an example where one company is throwing away a byproduct of its manufacturing, while a nearby company is buying that byproduct from a bulk supplier because they don't know the first is just disposing of it.
With a regional entity serving as a collaborator that can preserve confidentiality in what companies are disposing of, new efficiencies can be created. But the impetus, he said, is on governments to show a bottom-line benefit to companies.
"We've got to have numbers in order for us to make a move," he said.
The morning's final speaker was Tracy Casavant, president of the Vancouver, B.C.-based Eco-Industrial Solutions. She said the solutions the forum focused on can happen anywhere, using an "eco-industrial park" in the oil sands boomtown of Fort McMurray, Alberta, as an example.
But, she said, the numbers have to line up for developers.
"All the basic pro forma conditions need to exist," she said. "If we don’t' think that way about greening our employment lands, you end up with a lot of beautiful master plans that sit on shelves."
The discussion didn't immediately sell everyone in the audience.
"I'm nervous about the idea of using taxpayer money to reduce risk to business," said Marilyn McWilliams, a commissioner on the Tualatin Valley Water District. "We're seeing some of the states and local entities being threatened with bankruptcy."
Mangan, who in his presentation talked about creating smaller tax districts to finance environmentally friendly developments, said the risk to governments is minimal.
"The private sector is putting up all the money," he said. "The city or county that has the taxing jurisdiction doesn't have to put up any of the money – what that jurisdiction has to determine is the activity provides for the public good." The long-term improvements are then paid back through a smaller tax district, with savings to tenants and landlords in energy costs offsetting the tax costs on projects that would be too expensive to finance up front.
Portland-based consultant Beverly Bookin questioned whether businesses would be willing to continue to work toward environmentally-friendly development when, she said, environmental interests don't seem to be willing to give any ground to businesses.
"The degree to which businesses are beginning to embrace sustainable development and operational practices in honor of the environmental leg of the triple-bottom line – I don't see our environmental community in our region valuing economic viability," she said. "In fact, they're often using the business community as a scapegoat." She asked the panel for suggestions on bridging that gap.
Casavant suggested that the message that everyone's working toward a common goal may get lost in the motivations for working toward that goal.
"Hold properly facilitated multi-stakeholder events," she said. "Invite people you think might throw something at you from the beginning. Let the ideology go."
Also at the forum was a quorum of the Clackamas County Commission, with at least three commissioners wearing green pins that said "JOBS." Commissioner Charlotte Lehan said she found the conference to be helpful, although she said she would have liked to have heard more direct emphasis on job creation.
But the parts of the conference "on the nuts and bolts of developing in industrial parks, and innovative ways to do that," were helpful, she said.
Several hours later in Portland, the speakers held a debriefing with Metro staffers, Hillsboro city staff members and Metro councilors Shirley Craddick, Kathryn Harrington and Council President Tom Hughes.
The panelists suggested Metro take a greater role in facilitating the conversations discussed earlier.
Calling Metro a "unique gift to America" and a "regional powerhouse," Gregory said the metropolitan area (not specifically Metro) is the "most important module in society today."
Metro's role, he said, is "to bridge the silos and find the synergies and find the blockages that may exist," Gregory said. "How do you help (local governments) bridge the gap between incremental growth and cost issues, and policy issues about water and energy that maybe are tying their hands from doing what's the right thing to do – which is reduce resource consumption and energy consumption?"
Casavant emphasized the importance of Metro to help its cities and counties build capacity, training and policies to recruit new types of businesses and development models.
Council President Hughes said the discussion reminded him of the difference between public utilities and private utilities in reducing energy consumption.
"The public utilities districts, who were simply marketing electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration to the customer, had virtually no interest in conservation," he said. "The privately-owned utility that had to invest in an additional source of power saw (reducing demand) as pretty cost effective.
"The whole Community Investment Strategy project will benefit from the expertise you've brought us," Hughes told the panelists.