LES: Economic Development Day
The 2018-19 Leadership Eugene Springfield cohort completed their economic development day in February. This class focused on strategic economic initiatives in the Springfield/Eugene community, and the organizations impacted by those initiatives. The day began with a presentation by Emily Reiman, Executive Director of NEDCO, who discussed NEDCO’s recent merger with Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services, and how many more low income families they would be able to reach because of the merger. She also discussed economic trends in our nation and in Oregon that have led to the recent housing crisis such as exorbitant student loan debts, stagnant wages, and zoning laws that make it difficult to build multi-family housing or apartment buildings.
Lane County has a several large industry sectors that contribute to our traded sector economy. To talk about the challenges and opportunities of each of these sectors, we brought in Johnson Crushers International to talk about advanced manufacturing, Seneca Sawmill to represent advanced wood products manufacturing, XS Media representing the tech sector, and Young Mountain Tea to talk about the food and beverage industry. For our manufacturing sectors, policy decisions are the biggest challenge currently facing organizations, especially those organizations competing in a national or international market. These policies affect not only how they do business, but workforce and labor issues as well. For tech companies, access to funds is one of their biggest challenges. Unless an organization is very established and has some collateral, banks are reluctant to fund companies with primarily intellectual property.
Later in the day, the cohort toured RAIN Eugene, and heard from Dana Siebert, interim Executive Director, what the organization does for entrepreneurs in our community. Following that, Anne Fifield with the City of Eugene and Austin Ramirez with Lane County discussed what the public sector tools for economic development are. The cohort also heard from economist Tim Duy, who discussed the economic forecast for our state. The day ended with a skill-set on open door communication by Robert Killen, as a way of introducing what it is you do, in a way that leads to further conversation.
