Snohomish county business groups seek new options

Published 11:10 pm Friday, August 13, 2010

EVERETT — Instead of replacing the outgoing director of Snohomish County’s Economic Development Council, business leaders are looking at creating a more powerful and effective business organization with the county’s two biggest chambers of commerce.

Rick Cooper, chairman of the EDCs board of directors, said leaders of the three groups have engaged a consultant and are talking about how to proceed.

“On the one hand, it’s very exciting, but its also anxiety provoking,” he said of the effort. “I’m strongly in the camp that there can be a new and better way.”

EDC president Deborah Knutson announced last week that she will leave the organization she has led for 12 years at the end of October and take a little time off before looking for a new challenge.

Cooper said the EDC may look for an interim director while it continues to work with the Everett Area and South Snohomish County chambers of commerce on what the groups are calling Project Concentrus.

“I think there’s a better approach to promoting economic vitality in the region,” Cooper said, noting that groups around the country are examining similar moves.

He said consultants from Cleveland hired by the county business groups are several weeks away from providing a report and a business plan for a new direction.

For Knutson’s part, she plans to take the month of November off to travel in South America.

“I’m treating it like a sabbatical,” she said, noting she’s always envied her college teaching friends who got to take time off for extended learning.

Then she plans a “stress-free holiday season where I will bake cookies instead of buy them” before she starts looking for a new job.

Her existing job has been anything but stress-free. Her work has been to promote economic development, and her performance is graded by the number of jobs she brings into the county.

But Knutson’s not complaining.

She loves Snohomish County and likes “telling its story.”

The county is fortunate it’s in the Puget Sound area, which provides 70 percent of the state’s wages, she noted. And the county is fortunate to have about 40 percent of its jobs focused on manufacturing, a high number, she said.

Knutson noted that those jobs pay well, especially those related to aerospace manufacturing.

“We’re so lucky to have that plant out there,” she said of Boeing’s Everett factory. “You just can’t replace those really, really good jobs.”

For that reason, Knutson said, whoever is hired to replace her should not take Boeing and other aerospace businesses for granted.

“There’s a projected $3.6 trillion market for airplanes during the next 20 years,” she said. “How can you possibly ignore that?”

Knutson said the county needs to continue to focus on things that help the aerospace industry — from developing a university here to produce engineers to courting other manufacturers like Airbus or Bombardier to employ the county’s well-trained work force.

And she said the county also should focus on developing its medical device industry around well-established companies such as SonoSite, which produces portable imagers.

During much of her career, Knutson has worked on expanding the area’s biotech industry. But she noted that what has happened here is that once a company gets established and develops a product, it often is purchased by a larger one.

“They buy it and its intellectual property and take it away,” she said. “What benefits us more is the manufacturing side.”

Knutson said her successor should immediately plan to work closely with his or her counterparts in King and Pierce counties.

“Seattle contacts are really important,” she said, noting that many Seattle-area companies are looking for new homes elsewhere in the region where they can expand.

Knutson, who saw her agency grow from an annual budget of $300,000 to one with $1.5 million a year, said partnerships are important. She said in the last decade that the county has diversified its economy a little bit and that she’d like to see more economic development work in the smaller, more rural communities.

She said the county’s population base is changing, with a growing number of people with higher educations. She said many of those people live here, but commute to Seattle or Bellevue to work.

One thing that needs to happen is creating more jobs here that fit our education base, she said.

Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459, benbow@heraldnet.com.