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Columbia’s opportunity to create jobs

Columbia’s opportunity to create jobs
By BOB COBLE
Guest columnist
This originally appeared as an Op/Ed in the State

Our challenge in the Columbia region is to create new jobs and raise our per capita income.
As outlined by Michael Porter of the Monitor Group, our economic development efforts during the past 60 years primarily involved marketing low-wage labor and cheap land, subsidized by tax breaks. We went after and landed large-scale manufacturing companies from outside South Carolina that would invest here and put our people to work.

It was a government-led strategy that served us well, and that we should still pursue for high-value, advanced manufacturing projects. The troubling news of Standard and Poor’s downgrade of South Carolina’s credit rating, primary because of poor job growth, though, should be a wake-up call to all of us that the time for changing how we approach economic development is now.

We have to develop our economy around knowledge-oriented jobs and companies that will drive the new economy and leave residual wealth in Columbia for generations to come. In Columbia, we are already down the path in pursuit of a growing knowledge and innovation economy.
Two and a half years ago we adopted our regional technology plan. EngenuitySC, a coalition of leaders from the public sector, higher education and the private sector, is implementing the plan. We have expanded the USC Columbia Incubator. We have infused cash into the
Trelys venture fund to invest in new Columbia ventures. We have started an entrepreneurial training program at Midlands Tech that is expanding to other schools in the region. USC has expanded its technology transfer efforts, bringing on staff that will work proactively to commercialize its promising discoveries. A local angel capital network was formed last year, which serves as an additional capital source for new, high-growth start-ups.

At USC, more than $140 million in funding for the first phase of the USC research campus was approved last month, with more than $30 million of that being parking facilities financed by the city of Columbia and Richland County. Phase one will include five research buildings in addition to the parking facilities. Phase one research will concentrate on “next energy” such as hydrogen fuel cells, public health and biomedical sciences. The initial $140 million investment will result in almost 2,000 new research and technology jobs and a $3 billion economic benefit over a 15-year period.

USC has the nation’s only National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Fuel Cells. Savannah River National Lab has one of the largest concentrations of hydrogen research scientists in the world. BMW, which is developing a hydrogen vehicle, is committing millions of dollars to Clemson’s International Center for Automotive Research.

Every facet of society stands to be impacted by the dawning of efficient hydrogen-generated energy. A major source of environmental pollution will disappear. America’s reliance on foreign oil will end. The economic opportunity that is represented by the hydrogen economy,
or other sources of alternative energy, is tremendous. The potential job creation from growing our own companies or from attracting those involved in commercialization is very exciting.

Last month we announced the South Carolina Next Energy Initiative, a joint effort tying Columbia, Aiken and Greenville together as we look to the future that harnessing hydrogen and other alternative energy holds for this state. By coming together we believe we can create
an economic cluster that can literally transform not just one city or region’s economy, but that of our entire state. Recent agreements between USC’s fuel cell center with major international fuel cell research and development organizations in Germany and Korea indicate that the world is beginning to take a look at us. In the coming months, we will announce short-term and long-term hydrogen plans for the state, and we will charter a state-wide organization to promote the creation of our hydrogen economy, much of which will develop right here in Columbia out of the discoveries made at USC's research campus and through companies that emerge in Columbia's new entrepreneurial community.

Columbia's strategy for developing a knowledge and innovation economy is four-fold. The first three are well underway. They involve supporting the development of USC's research campus, building our entrepreneurial infrastructure through Engenuity's work and pursuing the South Carolina Next Energy Initiative. The fourth part of our strategy involves fundamentally and strategically changing the way we market the Columbia region and South Carolina. We must market our emerging knowledge and innovation economy and recruit industry partners for USC's research campus. It will require a BRAC-like effort with a two-fold strategy.

First, we must identify the appropriate industry partners. Second, we must have a comprehensive and sustained marketing effort to land those partners as occupants at the research campus. We already have many Fortune 500 companies participating in the USC fuel cell center. We need to increase this number and get them to expand the amount of research they do here in Columbia.

Our recruitment efforts in the next few years will be critical to our success. The good news is that the companies we will target are looking for progressive, creative communities in which to locate — exactly what we are doing with the revitalization of the Vista, downtown, the riverfront, Five Points and Devine Street.

Author Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class outlines how the people who can fill the jobs required by the USC research campus can live and work anywhere in the world. They want to live in attractive, healthy, diverse and interesting cities where the arts flourish. Mr. Coble is the mayor of Columbia. This column is adapted from his speech to the Columbia Rotary Club last week.