A comprehensive economic- development report due out today details which Denver industries are flourishing, which are stumbling and what can be done about it.
The report will make recommendations for Denver’s corporate, government and education leaders, outlining ways to improve the region’s chances for economic growth and diversity.
Known as a competitiveness study, the report examines nine industry “clusters” in Denver: aerospace, air transportation, beverage production, broadcast and telecommunications, computer storage, energy, finance, life sciences and software.
The study “looks at a variety of rankings … and what we need to do to improve them,” said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., the sponsoring group.
The report touches on employment concentration, growth potential and available resources for each industry. Results were based on a variety of factors, including hard economic data and surveys of corporate-site selectors responsible for business relocations, Clark said.
Patty Silverstein, president of Littleton’s Development Research Partners and chief consulting economist for the corporation, helped craft the report.
The corporation, which is associated with the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, hit a fundraising goal of $12.5 million this year to promote economic development. It has set a goal of helping create 100,000 jobs in five years.
Competitiveness studies are instrumental to economic development, but only if city governments, business leaders and educators implement the recommendations, said Randall Kempner of the Council of Competitiveness, a Washington research group whose funding comes from corporate executives, university presidents and labor- union leaders.
“The value is the activities that emanate from (the report),” Kempner said. “The theory isn’t the hard part; it’s taking action.”
A competitiveness study crafted two years ago in Austin, Texas, helped city leaders raise about $15 million for economic-development efforts, said Beverly Kerr, research director with the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.
The report helped assure business leaders that if they provided the funding, “there was a strategy and there was something (for them) to gain,” she said.
As a result, Kerr said, Austin was able to entice Home Depot to open a data center there that employs 500 people.
“It was very important,” Kerr said of the Austin report.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-820-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
