Development Expert Urges STL Collaboration
Date Posted: September 11, 2015
Posted In: News, Organizations,
If the St. Louis region wants to grow development and employment, the first order of business is to put an end to Missouri/Illinois and urban/rural political squabbles. That’s what Chris Chung, CEO, of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina (EDPNC) told the audience at Construction Forum STL’s quarterly networking/speaker event Wednesday.
Chung should know: He joined EDPNC as its CEO at the age of 38, after seven years as the founding CEO of the Missouri Partnership, the public-private non-profit assigned to bring new development to Missouri. He accepted the position with North Carolina last December, just after agreeing to speak before the Forum.
PHOTO: Chris Chung, at right, with a delegation of Japanese construction educators and technologists from Shibaura Institute of Technology. The group was brought here by the Carpenters District Council. Also in the photo are Barry Stelzer, safety director/trainer for the CDC in red shirt. At left are Joe Blanner, president, and Tom Finan, executive director of Construction Forum STL.
Chung said that North Carolina is in an entirely different position than his experience in Missouri. There, he said, the entire focus is “deal flow.”
Chung, who began his 18-year career while in college, doing economic development in his home state of Ohio, said that the number of opportunities that come before his organization in North Carolina is exponentially greater than what he experienced in Missouri.
“The biggest difference is in the number of deals where they want you to compete — data centers, advanced manufacturing. I’m amazed at how often the phone rings,” he said. Chung said that while North Carolina is one of a handful of “proactive and aggressive” states, along with Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina, its location on the Eastern seaboard and larger population base also factor in.
By contrast Missouri, he said, “is one of those states that struggles with identity, particularly in attracting international investment. It’s one of those “M” states — Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota — in the middle of the country.”
Chung said that on his way to work every day he drives by a huge Met Life data center with 1,300 jobs that the St. Louis region almost won. Chung said that while incentives factored in, “perception tilted the scales.”
“Every company has a unique calculus on how and where they choose to expand and grow,” he told the Triangle Business Journal, referring to that project in an interview shortly after arriving in North Carolina.
Referring to that “calculus,” Chung, anticipating audience questions, issued a pre-emptive analysis regarding the political rhetoric that has been swirling around the gubernatorial veto of Right to Work in Missouri.
Chung said that while North Carolina is a Right to Work state and his office uses that fact in marketing, it is usually not the deciding factor in a company’s decision to locate there. He noted that the number of states with and without Right to Work is about equal. Chung repeated that response later in the morning during an appearance on the Charlie Brennan Show on KMOX radio.
One area where the St. Louis area has a distinct advantage, he said, is the investment that has been made in building out speculative infrastructure for biotech labs and high tech startups.
An area that leaders here should be paying much more attention to, he said, is “urban/rural tension.” While it might be politically expedient for rural leaders to quash projects in St. Louis and Kansas City, such actions do not produce a corollary development in the rural sector. “You don’t press down on one side of the balloon and it rises on the other,” he said.
Chung also said that the Missouri and Illinois leaders of the St. Louis region should form a “bi-state collaborative — a compact, a cease-fire, where they agree not to poach one another’s work.”
State leaders consider it a win if they get jobs to move across state lines, a situation that creates no real growth for a bi-state area, he said. Chung noted that in the Kansas City Metro area, “That doesn’t happen.”