Charlie Grantham, Chairman of the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Economic Development in Prescott.

This is Part 1 of 3. Here are links to Part 2 and Part 3 .

"Well, I kind of consider myself to be a poster child for the type of people I'm interested in." And with that statement, Charlie Grantham introduced himself and his ideas for economic development in the City of Prescott.

Grantham is the new Chairman for the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Economic Development in Prescott. He was appointed by Mayor Jack Wilson. Grantham is the author or co-author of several books, including Corporate Agility, published in August, 2007. And it was precisely his expertise in urban development that prompted Wilson to ask Grantham to head up his advisory committee.

Grantham continued, "I've lived in Prescott since 2001, we moved here from northern California, and we moved here for the same reasons that I think attract a lot of folks, the quality of life, cost of living, climate, rural area - generally a slower pace of life. So, I packed up my stuff, sold my house and wrote Governor Schwarzennegger a not-so-nice letter and left. Here we are. We came here for all of those reasons."
[Editor's note, Schwarzennegger did not even announce his candidacy until 2003. Grantham must have sent the letter to Governor Gray Davis.]

But, what does Grantham do? And why was he tapped by Wilson to be head of the Economic Development Advisory Committee? "My business is helping companies and communities move into the future." Grantham said. "In other words, our job is to tell them what the world is going to be like in 3-5 years and help them start to do things today so that they're there in 3-5 years."

The Company Perspective

Grantham has learned quite a bit since he began working with companies. "The motivation on the part of companies is - really there are three. One is to reduce costs. We all know that. The second is to recruit and keep good talent. Highly talented people, especially knowledge workers, are hard to find, and getting harder to find and are going to be a lot harder to find. And then, thirdly, is to do something about creativity and innovation. Companies need to just create, create, create, create. And, there's a lot of competition around the world. So, that's kind of half of it, working with companies, and we call that Corporate Agility, and yes, we did just write a book that just got published in August that tells folks about that and how to do it, and that's probably the book that Jack was referring to."

It sounds obvious to anyone in business, but even for larger companies, one of the biggest needs is to find great employees. Grantham talked about the increased challenges for the 21st century. "In doing that work for the past three years or so, say, since 2003, we started hearing from companies, we don't know where the talent is, and we don't know how to find it. And we kind of scratched our heads, and said, 'Let's do some research and find out. Who are these people, where are they, where are they going, and what are they interested in?' And that led us to the world of economic development, and we started finding little communities throughout, well not only the United States, throughout the world, but mostly in North America, where folks were moving to, because of all those reasons I just told you I moved to Prescott."

"It's like a lightbulb went off," Grantham said. "And I said, 'Wait a second, if we can take these companies who need that talent and connect them with these communities who've got the talent, we'd have a win-win situation for everybody.' And that's led down a long pathway."

The New Mayor's Advisory Committee on Economic Development

Grantham backed up to discuss the committee he heads. "I got introduced to Jack Wilson over a year ago by a mutual friend who I can't even remember right now - it was one of those, 'Hey, you guys gotta sit down and meet.' And we did, and went to the Raven, that's where all good conversations start in Prescott. And I started telling him about what I think communities need to do to become magnets for that kind of talent, in other words, what can Prescott do, so a couple hundred Charlie Granthams in the world go, 'Ah! I got to be there!' And they come here and they bring their wealth with them. So, it was a great conversation, and Jack was very attentive and very interested, and he gets elected. Well, then he calls me on the phone and he says, 'Okay, do you want to do something about all that, or are you just going to talk?' So he offered me the opportunity to lead this advisory committee and, we've had our first meeting in December, and it's pretty much together, we're still adding members to it, but it's kind of like, 'Well, who isn't represented?' and we'll reach out into the community and find someone who can have that voice for us."

Asked who was on the committee, Grantham didn't have a list with him, but he did his best to recollect all the names. "Well, this is embarrassing because I'm not going to remember them all... The Presidents, the heads of the colleges and universities, a banker, real estate developers, Thom Thurman, the supervisor, Bob Luzius from the Council, trying to go round the table here, Yavapai Regional Medical Center, and I can send you the rest of the names, I think we've got about nine people or something right now. Probably take it up to twelve, maybe a little over twelve, but then you get a committee that's going in four different directions. You can't get them focused." (Click here for a list of the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Economic Development members)

But, this committee has a different makeup than it had previously, under former Mayor Rowle Simmons. For example, there isn't any representation for retail. Grantham explained the thinking behind the choice of the committee members. "There were a couple of retail people, somebody from WalMart, and a small business owner, and... No, we sort of refocused the committee under Jack's direction, to be pointed more at this target audience. We think it's an underserved segment of the economy."

Grantham described his goals for the committee, "What we're doing is taking a new look at how economic development has traditionally been done, not only in Prescott, but throughout the United States, trying to move into a different world, the future of work, duh! and also kind of take that to a level, see Prescott as becoming kind of a nucleus, for a regional effort along these directions. So, that's kind of the basis for it."

Grantham was a co-author of Corporate Agility.

What Will the Committee Do?

This isn't going to be an easy task, as he noted ruefully. "Now, we've picked a wonderful year to do this, with revenues decreasing and budgets going to have to be cut - well, what are you going to do?"

It's Grantham's contention that what has worked in the past, may not continue to work in the future. "The point is this - traditionally, economic developers have looked at attracting a business, small, medium or large, by providing facilities, incentives and generally marketing the brand of the community as a great place to have your business. And then the businesses would come, and the idea is they would hire people who lived here and provide them jobs. That's been a traditional industrial model of economic development. And that coupled with the big box stores, you know, if we can get another department store or a lumber yard or whatever, it generates tax revenues."

But now it's a whole new paradigm, according to Grantham. And his committee will take a different approach to trying to generate economic development and vitality. "What we're trying to do is say, 'Well, that's all well and good, and we don't want to throw that away, but in the future, the wealth of communities is going to be created by these folks we call knowledge workers.' You and I are typical knowledge workers," Grantham said, pointing out that neither of us worked a traditional 8-5 job in an office.

"We work with ideas. We don't necessarily have to touch physical things to do what we do. And the economy of the United States is shifting very rapidly in that direction. So, if those are the people with money, and those are the people with talent, and if those are the people that these large companies want to employ, but not necessarily move them to Palo Alto, California or Austin, Texas or New York City, then we believe there's an opportunity for towns like Prescott to do something to become a magnet for that kind of talent, and that's where we're headed. And there are examples of towns in suburban areas in the United States and Europe doing this and doing it successfully. So, it's not like we're reinventing the wheel. Our job, as a committee, is to figure out how we can go out and kind of get best practices and learn how this has been done and been done right and bring it to Prescott, and that will serve everybody. It will make it easier for example, for Prescott College to recruit students. It'll make it easier for Embry Riddle to get good faculty here. Yavapai College the same. The regional medical center, it'll solve part of their problem with attracting and retaining physicians and their spouses. It will kind of ripple through the community. We've only been at this for a month, but that's the goal, is to really put Prescott on the map, at least in the United States as being a center of knowledge workers, of being a magnet for this kind of talent."

Becoming a Magnet for Knowledge Workers

How does a community turn itself into a magnet? "Let me paint a picture for you," Grantham said. "Let's say we finally get our act together and we advertise in the San Jose Mercury News to all of these large companies; the Googles, the Hewlett-Packards, Apple, the whomevers, and say, 'Hey, have you ever thought about moving some your product design or marketing teams to a town like Prescott, and here's what we have to offer, and here's who is already here?' It's my contention that if we ever do that, busloads of these people are going to show up. If I'm a software engineer, and I work for Hewlett Packard, and I have to drive two hours every morning and two hours every night to go to work five days a week, because I can't make enough money to afford to buy a house in Palo Alto... Ok, you pay an engineer a hundred thousand dollars, that sounds like a whole lot, but with that money, you're going to have to live out in the central valley if you want a typical three bedroom house and a halfway decent neighborhood. The companies can't afford to pay those folks, but they still need them. So, well, why not have a team of those people in Prescott? But Prescott has got to provide those folks the things they are looking for. We probably are not doing as good a job of providing that right now as we could."

So, what would Prescott need to provide in order to attract knowledge workers? "Well, there's a whole bunch, but the biggest one I think is technology. Ubiquitous broadband access to wireless networks." Grantham gestured to the restaurant we were sitting in. "I mean, we happen to be sitting in a place that's got Wi-Fi . Two years ago, that wasn't the case. Barnes and Noble is right across the street, the same thing. Two years ago, that was not the case. There are still within the city proper, a number of dead spots. So we need to do something about that. The technology thing is probably the first one."

Grantham continued, "The second thing is, I think we need to provide people with places they can go to and work part of the time but not all of the time. These people, when we look at how they really behave, we find that they only spend about a third of their time in their corporate office. So the company is paying for this office that is only being used a day and a half a week. It's not very cost-effective. Some of that they work at home, but then there's the other gap, where they're like us, they're sitting here in a coffee house with Wi-Fi, or they go to a public library, or they run around like I'm going to do this afternoon. I'm going to the UPS store, I'm going to go to Kinkos, I'm going to go to the Post Office, I'm going to go to the bank, I'm going to go do all that stuff, but I gotta run around like a crazy person to do it. If we had places in Prescott where these knowledge workers could go and get a lot of that stuff done in one place, I think that would be very attractive. And in fact, we're finding that some large companies are starting to provide that kind of support service, if you will, in the communities where their people live."

"This idea came together over here in the food court [at the mall] about three years ago. My business parter and I were sitting in there with a couple of clients who had flown in from the midwest," Grantham said. "And we were sitting here in the food court and we were going, 'Well, wait a second. There's a Chinese place, there's a Submarine place, there's a pizza place, there's a whatever... What about if that was a Kinkos, what about if that was a video conference thing, what about if that was a FedEx, what about if there was a small business development specialist. What about if over there was the Chamber of Commerce?' And I come into this place and I've got access to all of that and if I use it, I pay for it, and if I don't use it I don't pay for it."

"So then we started asking people, what are the kinds of things you would like, and how much would that be worth to you? And, then talking to businesses and asking, 'Would you be willing to pay somebody to provide that to your employees and not have to build your own facility. And they all went, 'Well of course we would, because it would be a lot cheaper to do business and it would be something that would attract the kind of people we want if we said we could give this to you.' So, that's where we're headed."

"And there's a whole long list of other things about communities having diversity, about there being access to arts and entertainment, a whole bunch of things that we really have here in Prescott, but we don't advertise it really well." Grantham noted. "I mean, how many people outside of Prescott know about the Tsunami on the Square in the summer?"

The Search for Local Knowledge Workers in Prescott

"Let me back up a little bit, we think there's probably about 3000 of them here already, but they're out there hiding between, underneath the rocks and cactus and trees, whatever," Grantham explained. "And they've come here like I have, very quietly for these reasons, and we're here. And we've sort of figured out how to do business and everything else, but life could be a lot better for us if there were some of these other things going on. A good test of this is to go to the Raven, go to Cuppers, come in here [Wildflower Bread Company] and just watch who's there and what they're doing and talk to them. And for every one you talk to, they know half a dozen to a dozen other people like themselves. So, one of the first tasks of this committee is to figure out a way to get a grant, what we want to do is to do a study to identify how many are here. And there's a model that we can use, some people in Colorado did a couple of years ago. But, (I'm a researcher), just looking at demographic data, it's my guess we've got about 3000 of them in the Prescott area. But they're on the Shuttle, going down to the Phoenix airport, every once in a while."

Grantham paused a moment, thinking. "The point is, I think we've already got a nucleus of them here, and if we can find out who they are and help them be more successful at business, then we can use them as kind of the 'bait,' if you will, that draws these other people here. But first of all, we need to know what we've got."

So, why are knowledge workers important to the Prescott economy? Grantham explained what they can do for the community. "Let me give you some numbers here. The retail business generates a certain percentage of revenue for the city based on its sales tax, and we all know what those numbers are, and those numbers are decreasing right now because of the general contraction and slowdown of the economy. The people we're talking about average $100,000-150,000 per year in income. And on average put $4000 a year directly back into the economy. They're purchasing other services, they're going to Kinkos, they're coming in here, they're going to the Raven, wherever."

"But, here's the important point," Grantham emphasized. "They also write a lot of checks back to the community for charitable organizations. They're writing checks to Habitat for Humanity, their local church, the Boys and Girls Club, whatever it is. This group of people tends to put a lot of their time and money back into the community, more so on average than somebody that shops at your local WalMart. It just goes with the numbers."

"Wait a minute, won't this group of people shop at WalMart?" Grantham was asked.

He shook his head. "These kind of people are going to be shopping at Trader Joe's," Grantham laughs and rolls his eyes. "Which isn't here yet; they're going to want an Acura dealer in town, instead of another truck dealer; they're going to be demanding a different level of service than has traditionally been here. So we need to understand this going forward. And other communities that have gone through this process have found that to be a real shock. That these folks, they do things differently."

This is Part 1 of 3. Here are links to Part 2 and Part 3 .

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