DOUGLAS COUNTY — Polystrand faced a tough choice as it explored mass-producing its recyclable composite materials that fuse glass and plastics. The company could expand in Montrose, a good fit when its materials mostly went into sporting goods, or it could find a location that would make it easier to push into larger markets.
In August, , just north of E-470, easily accessible to its trucks, and southeast of Centennial Airport, where customers, including major automakers, could fly in.
Polystrand will initially employ 50, with plans to add another 200 as production gears up to 100 million pounds of composite material a year.
“We needed to be seen as cutting-edge and high-tech,” said Edward Pilpel, president of Polystrand, adding that Douglas County offered that in a way neither Montrose nor other Front Range counties could.
Douglas County landed near the top of a Denver Post analysis of economic performance among Colorado counties during President Barack Obama’s nearly four years in office. The county ranked fourth based on changes in employment, unemployment rates and per-capita income, and was the best- performing large county.
The attractions that lured Polystrand — a prestige location and access combined with aggressive moves by county leaders to seal the deal — help explain why Douglas County fared better in the recession and slow recovery than most.
For the year ended in March, Douglas County had the 10th-fastest rate of job growth among the nation’s 328 largest counties, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The county’s per-capita personal incomes rose 5.5 percent from the end of 2008 through 2010, even as they fell 4.3 percent statewide.
On Oct. 5, in northern Douglas County.
Sporting-goods retailer Cabela’s plans to open a new store in Lone Tree, one of two planned for metro Denver. Children’s Hospital Colorado is adding a south campus in Highlands Ranch that will employ 300.
Health-care software maker Tri-Zetto said in April it plans to add 750 jobs over the next five years at a new global headquarters in the Meridian International Business Center.
But the success in luring jobs won’t translate into an endorsement of the Obama administration in this conservative county.
“We give all credit to Barack Obama for the well-being of Douglas County,” joked Mark Baisley, the county’s Republican Party chairman. “We are generally ignoring the Obama administration in D.C.”
Added County Commissioner Jill Repella, also a Republican: “We would be having greater success if the things happening in Washington, D.C., weren’t happening,” specifically increased regulation and proposals for higher tax rates.
Make it easier for businesses to take root and operate, she said, and then profit from the activity they generate. That’s a model the country as a whole could follow, she said.
Politics weren’t a factor in Polystrand’s decision to move to Douglas County, Pilpel said. And the company stands to benefit from the administration’s push for higher auto- mileage standards and its emphasis on domestic manufacturing.
Rather, the county’s help in building the new plant quickly and its waiving of the business personal-property tax were important factors, Pilpel said.
Repella, who came into office nearly four years ago, said she and other county officials took aggressive steps to make it known that Douglas County was open for business. That ranged from reducing permitting fees to proactively cutting county expenditures before property values declined.
Bob Burke, owner of SkyVenture Colorado LLC, a wind tunnel that brings in about 27,000 tourists a year to Lone Tree, said he has seen revenues grow the past three years but remains in a holding pattern.
He would like to expand and hire more, but there is too much uncertainty, from health-care reforms to consumer spending.
“I am looking for stability, for an administration that gets it,” he said. “I am waiting.”
