Sunday • November 2, 2003
Tod Rasmussen/The Reporter
Solano Economic Development Corporation President Mike Ammann stands in front of a map in his Fairfield office. He has been aggressively marketing the county for several months.
Putting Solano on the map
Solano EDC president reflects on his first 100 days in post
By Mary Lynch/Reporter Staff
Mike Ammann, the president of the Solano Economic Development Corporation, wasn't in town much in September and October.
He was "gone fishing."
Of course, anyone who knows the driven Ammann has guessed that's not, in the literal sense, true.
He offered the fishing metaphor to explain that for the past couple of months, he's been on a road trip touring the "the fishing holes" of economic development - the conferences, symposia and annual meetings where the corporate site selectors, real estate brokers and top managers from a variety of national and international industries convene to discuss their next big moves.
With the lure of Solano County at the end of his line, Ammann strategically cast it.
In his first 100 days on the job, Ammann has been using aggressive marketing tactics to bring new businesses and investors to the county.
When Ammann officially assumed his position with the regional marketing body, he knew he'd have to hit the ground running.
After 20 years of hits and misses as the economic development engine for the seven-city county, Solano EDC (formerly called SED Corp.) had been missing more than hitting in recent years, said its members, who include city managers, chambers of commerce, local school districts, major employers and small business owners.
Leadership issues and internal policy divisions had almost ground the SED Corp. engine to a halt by the time Ammann was hired.
Prior to his arrival, the group's Marketing Task Force had drawn up a three year plan that called for a more organized and aggressive team effort to do marketing for Solano County.
Ammann came in and surprised everyone by fast-forwarding to the tasks laid out for year three: aggressive business prospecting.
"My style was to come in here and create results. In the first three or four months, I wanted to get the ball rolling, to let people know that we're in the marketplace, we know our role, and we're aggressive."
He decided not to wait.
"You don't have to be perfect before you walk out the door. We have pre-existing relationships out there, and our local economic developers are ready to sell," Ammann said. "So there's no reason not to start aggressive marketing."
During his lengthy "road trip" to the various forums, summits and conferences, Ammann connected with corporate real estate executives, asset managers, CEOs and others in the economic development community who are the decision-makers or their influencers that lead to selection of sites for new or expanded corporage activity.
Ammann set about the task confidently, working the connections he made in economic development positions he'd held prior to his arrival in Solano County, in communities that include Bakersfield; Tempe, Ariz.; Dayton, Ohio; and Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, Mich.
His objective? To create a buzz about Solano County.
Early September found Ammann in Boston, at the International Asset Management Council.
Among the some 400 industrial asset managers, corporate real estate executives, and economic developers in attendance, a good handful were acquaintances of Ammann from his days in economic development in other parts of the U.S.
Ammann re-established ties with such key people as John Dues, vice chairman of Chesterton Blumenauer Binswanger, a corporate real estate brokerage out of Virginia, with whom he caught up on trends in attracting high tech industries.
He also caught up with Ed McCallum, the senior principal of McCallum Sweeney Consulting, corporate site selection consultants, who traded tips on the latest, most advanced ways of streamlining corporate site searches through sophisticated Internet technology.
Corporate site location consultants were 3,000 strong at the International Economic Development Council meeting in Ohio in mid-October, and again, Ammann renewed existing contacts and made fresh ones.
The stand-out here was Bob Ady, Ammann said. The "grandfather" of the corporate site selection consulting business, Ady explored the topic of the dynamic relationships between site selectors and local economic developers.
The creation of "clear pathways" to certain industries within local community economic development offices continues to be important in the industry. Ammann cited the example of Vacaville's economic development team's creation of the "biotech friendly" environment that has paved the way for some of the top players in that industry - notably Genentech - to set up shop there. It's a strategy that Ammann will continue to emphasize.
The specific importance of the biotech industry to Solano County was on Ammann's mind at the Biophex conference in San Jose in late September. There, Ammann targeted the suppliers to the biotech industry.
"We need to grow our biotech cluster with more manufacturing related to the biotech industry," he said. "We need to attract its suppliers. If we get enough of them, the sector will grow here in 5 to 10 years. It will make Solano County the obvious choice for that industry."
Ammann already has his eye on the the 2004 international meeting in San Francisco of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, where key members of that industry will convene to chart the course of that sector.
The largest conference Ammann attended was the CoreNet Global Summit in Atlanta in early October. Some 3,050 players in the corporate real estate and economic development worlds got together for a series of presentations on such issues as retaining corporate businesses and rehabilitating environmentally challenged property.
The bad news from this conference, Ammann said, was that the outlook for the commercial office real estate sector wouldn't get much brighter until sometime in 2004 or 2005; the industrial real estate outlook was even more glum.
"Don't believe the guys who pump up an imminent 'economic recovery'," Ammann said. Improvements in the national and international economies, he argued, will have to take place before we see it closer to home.
But none of this is stopping Ammann from readying Solano County for the opportunities that exist today and those that are on the horizon.
"We're looking at businesses that are really targeting California, whether because they have a particular market here, or they have customers here," Ammann said. "Then we can compete. We can go in and make relationships with those businesses that need to serve the California market, and really work them."
Ammann added that Solano County shouldn't ignore the opportunities that may exist in its own backyard. Tapping the regional marketplace for leads, he promised, would be a focus for Solano EDC in 2004.
That may mean courting businesses in Oakland, for example, where recent zoning changes, he said, have placed many companies in awkward positions. It may also mean recruiting existing East Bay businesses looking to expand.
Competition with other states remains more difficult, he said. as California continues to battle the perception that it is not a "business-friendly" state. "People tend to move where the opportunities are," said Ammann, with some concern.
Ammann was making the economic development rounds in the weeks just prior to, and just following, the recall election that eventually replaced Governor Gray Davis with screen-star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"There was a level of concern that if California wasn't doing well, business concerns there weren't doing well," said Ammann of the pre-recall mood. When the election was finally over in early October, people seemed relieved, whatever their opinions about the election results. "They were saying 'enough is enough, it's time to get back to work.' "
"More than Schwarzenegger, it's going to the state legislature that's going to have to hunker down and do what needs to be done," he speculated.
Ammann seems to be an adherent of the tactic himself.
It's that kind of "never-say-die" spirit that should serve him well.
The uncertainties of the current economic climate, he said, don't allow him to just sit around in his Fairfield office.
"You've got to be dropping the right lines in the right ponds," he said, returning to the fishing metaphor. "You've got to be talking to the right people."
And that means cultivating relationships, making connections, and not just waiting for things to happen.
"This is a relationship business. It's about trying to reach individuals who are decision-makers or are close to decision-makers."
Sheer persistence, it turns out, is a big part of Ammann's strategy.
Said Ammann: "I have a saying: follow up until they buy, die, or relocate."
Mary Lynch can be reached at
business@thereporter.com.
