Hours of presentations at Tuesday's "Building Tomorrow's Jobs" forum in Wilsonville won't necessarily create new jobs in the Portland region.
But organizers hope it gives the region's development community, as well as planners and regulators, some new ideas on how to encourage smarter development in the region's employment areas.
The summit, in other words, is designed to cut the red tape between when a permit is filed by a prospective employer and when a city or county signs off on a site plan.
The summit, which concludes with panel discussions Tuesday afternoon at the Metro Regional Center, is being organized in conjunction with the Westside Economic Alliance and the Clackamas County Business Alliance. It coincides with the release of the third volume of Metro's Community Investment Toolkit, this one called "Eco-Efficient Employment."
"A major objective for us is to get county and city officials in the building and planning departments familiar with these new techniques, so when private individuals come in with an application, they can get approved," said Burton Weast, executive director of the Clackamas County Business Alliance. "We can bring jobs and new technology in new areas if we can get flexibility."
For example, say a developer wants to put a green roof on a building. If there's nothing in a city's building code to explicitly allow for a green roof, it might get scrapped from a plan to save the bureaucratic hassle.
"If you come in with something like that, you ought to go to the head of the line, not the end of the line," Weast said.
More than 150 people, ranging from city planners to Metro councilors to business representatives, have signed up for the conference.
The discussion won't just focus on new developments, said Jonathan Schlueter, director of the Westside Economic Alliance.
"These developments work as well in inner cities as they would in greenfield developments," Schlueter said. "Employment is not the exclusive domain of any part of the region. It should be a common denominator for all of us."
Metro's involvement isn't directly tied to the politics of 2010, when the Metro Council President race centered around the economy and job creation. The toolkit has been an ongoing project, with the latest volume released in November.
"This is Metro as a facilitator, and also using Metro's contacts and resources to bring in speakers who are experts in different areas from across the country," Weast said.
Metro Council President Tom Hughes will deliver opening remarks at the meeting.
"I'm looking forward to the opportunity to have three world-class experts come to Portland to talk about how to use the toolkit to make us more efficient and grow more jobs," Hughes said.
Panelists scheduled to speak include Bert Gregory, CEO of architecture and planning firm Mithun, Andrew Mangan, the executive director of the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development and Tracy Casavant, president of Eco-Industrial Solutions.