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A couple of things to highlight this week, and a call to action. First off, last week we executed our Career Connect Day event which gets bigger and better every year… and this year we invited Minneapolis! Stay tuned for a Level Up! program in the Spring, tag teaming on this event to provide an actual hiring event for young adults immediately ready for the workforce. I love how this program is building out.
Second, another amazing example of corporate citizenship. Today I want to highlight Mortenson Family Foundation and M. A. Mortenson Companies Inc. Last week Fortis Capital announced that they have received generous support from Mortenson Companies to invest in their efforts to foster and support economic development in areas where it is most needed for systematically disadvantaged persons primarily in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and throughout Minnesota. Fortis Capital is a nonprofit engaged in economic development finance, with an emphasis on providing access to debt capital for businesses owned by persons of color and in challenged communities. Big impact done quietly, consistently… I so appreciate how Mortenson shows up! Third, a call to action at the St. Paul City Council. The St. Paul City Council is poised to take up zoning amendments that will prohibit new drive-thrus for restaurants and coffee shops while creating new requirements for pharmacy and bank drive-thrus. Restricting drive-thrus will negatively impact consumers and businesses by removing a key aspect of safety, convenience, and efficiency. A drive-thru ban limits a business’s ability to provide a safer environment for staff and consumers, which is crucial when dealing with workforce shortages and public safety concerns. Banning future drive-thrus for restaurants and coffee shops, along with strict limits on bank and pharmacy drive-thrus, will create another set of regulations that limit consumer choice and hinder growth in Saint Paul. The City needs to promote an environment that attracts new jobs, not create more restrictions that hinder economic development. These proposed code amendments will not change consumer behaviors and will result in further distances traveled to access a drive-thru or a heavier reliance on food delivery platforms, which will negate any positive environmental returns that would come from these proposed zoning code amendments. If you live or work in Saint Paul, follow the link here to contact your Council Member with concerns about these proposed changes. The first reading is scheduled for November 6 with a public hearing to be held on November 13. Adoption could come as soon as November 20. With such a divided vote (7-5) at the Planning Commission we need you to add your voice in opposition to these restrictions on business. Contact JP if you would like to learn more about this issue. See you in the trenches. B
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First off, another example of corporate citizenship. Hubbard Broadcasting is launching a statewide effort to raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Helene and Milton. Minnesota first responders and volunteers are heading south as well. Click here to find out how you can help.
And the teaser for this week: what grade does the Fed give the economy? President Kashkari gives the economy high marks and expects more interest rate cuts before the year’s end. Interest rates were cut .50% in September, very welcome and steeper than the typical 0.25% cut. Kashkari: “Right now I give the economy an ‘A.’ The economy is changing. We still have a strong labor market, and inflation is coming down. We’re not where we want to get to yet on inflation, but we’re making progress…. It’s an ‘A,’ but its in transition.” His remarks are echoed by those of the largest US banks, through last week’s earnings releases and comments on continued strong consumer spending. And one final note for your reading pleasure: last week TC Business published a good article, “Resuscitating Downtown St. Paul,” along with a companion interview of Ecolab’s CEO, Christophe Beck. As Saint Paul explores options to address the real estate “crossroads,” I particularly like what Christophe Beck says: “When talking about public safety, homelessness, and economic development growth, the main thing to remember is that these issues are very much intertwined. And solving community issues requires a community solution. What I am getting at here is that true collaboration is the only answer. Only when government, private sector, and nonprofit organizations come together can we foster positive, real change.” Come learn more about Saint Paul real estate at our November Lunch With Leaders with panelists from the Saint Paul Downtown Alliance and the real estate community. I’ve been thinking about corporate citizenship. You know, the social responsibility of businesses and the extent to which they commit to – and execute on – certain priorities. Last week I joined Wells Fargo in celebration of their new HOPE Inside Center, in collaboration with Operation HOPE, at their Prosperity branch. This is but one expression of Wells Fargo’s focus on economic inclusion, helpful financial tips, and the real impacts of financial education on our community. The big picture of Operation HOPE is “to make free enterprise and capitalism work for the underserved, thereby disrupting poverty and empowering economic inclusion for millions of low- and moderate-income youth and adults across the nation.” On the ground, they’re specifically providing free financial education to raise credit scores. There is a significant correlative relationship between credit scores and income, home ownership, even life expectancy. Learn more – I’m impressed.
This past week I also was reminded – twice! - of important lessons I’d learned years ago. That, clearly, I’d forgotten. You see, I’ve been wrestling with this notion of how to disagree on issues while still holding onto relationships. And 2 people I consider mentors reminded me of the book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom. Have you read it? This book changed my thinking about how to negotiate. And I’d like to share with you what I’ve been reminded of. This book is short, an easy read. The Four Agreements are a set of principles from the book by the same name, by Don Miguel Ruiz. Its goal is to help people achieve peace, happiness, love in relationships and life. I have found these Agreements to be tremendously helpful in business negotiation as well. As Ruiz says, “everything we do is based on agreements we have made – agreements with other people, with God, and with life. But the most important agreements are the ones we make with ourselves.”
It takes courage to be impeccable with my word, even when doing so might make me feel uncomfortable. It also takes courage to stop taking things personally – when an issue comes up, or when I disagree with someone, it’s not about me. And if I’m going to make assumptions, I always assume goodwill. Finally, I commit to doing my best. And part of that best is that “being impeccable” and “not taking things personally” commitment. Good reminder, yes? See you in the trenches, B First, a quick plug for our upcoming Career Connect Day on October 15, where we will bring 2,000 high school students together with employers for career exploration. We need you! This year we’ve expanded our invitation to include Minneapolis students… if you haven’t confirmed your table at the event, we still have openings available we are hoping to fill. It’s a short day, from 9 am to 2 pm, and you’ll get to connect with our youth to hear what they are thinking about, and with other businesses. You can register at the link above or connect with [email protected] directly for questions. This event continues to grow – join us this year and you’ll also be in the loop to secure your spot for next Spring’s extension program, for young adults (18-24yo), a Level Up programming/placement day.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the annual State of the Airport Luncheon, over at the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis. Always a great event, and this year was especially interesting. Board of Commissioners Chair Rick King shared the airport success “by the numbers”: 19 airlines, 163 destinations, 18th largest in terms of traffic, 168K SF expansion underway at Terminal 2, #1 on- time airport and #1 overall (again!!). Impressive numbers, yes? What I found especially notable – and potentially transformative as it relates to airlines and sustainability – was the news that, as we were meeting, Delta had sent off its first flight from MSP to New York using Minnesota-grown sustainable fuel (SAF). You should be saying “WOW!” because this is a really big deal. According to Minnesota Star Tribune article on the big event: “The Minnesota SAF Hub, a coalition led by Greater MSP, orchestrated this as part of its larger mission to decarbonize the airline industry, which accounts for about 2% of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. “This initial SAF delivery is another example of how we are making SAF real in Minnesota and showing the world how to do it right,” said Peter Frosch, president and CEO of Greater MSP, in a news release. “We are highlighting the first SAF flight from MSP International as another major milestone in our push to build a SAF economy anchored in Minnesota.” Now this initial trip was fueled by MN and ND farmers, partnering with Cargill. Their efforts are joined by Flint Hills Resources, who also has announced it is in the early phases of developing a SAF blending facility at its Pine Bend refinery, in collaboration with Delta Air Lines. This new facility is being designed to blend jet fuel with 30M gallons of SAF annually, and delivering it to MSP airport via Flint Hills’ existing jet fuel pipeline system. These companies and more: beyond telling people what they want to hear, they are making changes we can see. See you in the trenches, B Greetings! Happy to be back in the region after our annual ICLV trip last week to Toronto. More than 100 regional leaders traveled together to ICLV, building relationships with one another and learning from an impressive region. Our visit to Toronto was aspirational – what could we learn from a region much larger than ours, from their successes and their challenges? This week’s blog is a long one because I’ll share my key takeaways. I’ll start with my overall impressions. First off, we all were impressed by the welcome we received. At every level we were warmly welcomed and provided the utmost courtesy. We heard from business leaders, several mayors, economic development entities, Toronto’s board of trade (their chamber of commerce), and Ontario’s Premier (the U.S. parallel would be our state Governor). The region is incredibly diverse, its leadership less so. Its density is impressive, as is its development, investment in green energy, diversity of commerce, walkability. We listened with an eye towards: what can we emulate, what should we avoid? Details below.
KEY TAKEAWAYS WE NEED A REGIONAL STRATEGY We need a plan in order to get buy-in across the various priorities. Toronto created an organization, CreateTO. Its mission: “Building the city we love.” CreateTO is a regional real estate development organization, applying a strategic city-wide lens to Toronto’s real estate holdings. Thus far this organization has redeveloped over 8400 properties, close to 7000 buildings, for a collective value of $27B. Commercial, innovation districts, parks, housing. Brilliant concept. INVEST IN HOUSING And remove anything the operates as a disincentive. Offer incentives wherever possible. And ensure there is buy-in on a regional plan to reflect the plan to grow housing at all price points. Toronto has been very supportive of immigration, and today is more than 46% diverse. But they didn’t ramp up their housing growth at a similar pace. So shortage is severe, pricing extraordinarily high. Here is context: in MN, we have approximately 5.7M people and we have about a 100,000-unit shortage for housing. Toronto is 6.2M, and they have a 1.5M-unit shortage. More than tenfold higher than MN overall. And their housing prices are 3.3X higher than our region. INVEST IN TRANSIT INFRASTRUCTURE Traffic is bad – really bad. Dare I say, worse than Boston. As with housing, Toronto is still catching up with its population in terms of its transit infrastructure. But I’ve gotta say – we rode the train to and from the airport. And the ride was comfortable, fast, safe, clean. Notably so on all those points. DENSITY IS KEY Toronto is impressive for so many reasons. The first is its pace of growth. For example: have you ever heard of the Crane Index? The RLB Crane Index tracks the number of operating tower cranes in 14 major cities across the U.S. and Canada. Toronto, North America’s 4th largest city (behind Mexico City, NYC, and L.A.), is #1 on the crane index. In fact, our hosts told us that its numbers are higher than all the following 13 cities combined. Skyscrapers fill the skyline and more 100+ story buildings are under construction. Here's the kicker: density IS key. Toronto’s 6.2M people live and work within a 155-mile MSA (metropolitan statistical area). That’s about 40K people per square mile. The Greater MSP region of 3.7M is spread across 3000 square miles – or 1200 people per square mile!! If we were squished into 155 square miles, we’d be much more dense – over 23K people per square mile. So how we’re laid out absolutely impacts how we look as it relates to density in any one city or area. INVEST IN SPORTS/ENTERTAINMENT FACILITIES AS AN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TOOL PCL Construction gave us an amazing tour of Scotiabank Arena, where the Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL) and Toronto Raptors (NBA) play. This faclity also hosts a lot of majors concert tours and is the 4th busiest arena in North America after Madison Square Garden in NYC, Crypto.com Arena in LA, and United Center in Chicago. This building is 25 years old (same as the Xcel Energy Center) and its owners are 2 years into on an incredibly ambitious 5-year renovation of the building. Over the 5 years they will add clubs, restaurants, and public gathering spaces to the building, replace all of their seats and scoreboard, completely gut and refurbish all of their suites, and remodel all of the concourses, bathrooms, and concession stands in the building. A remarkable fact is they will stay open and not miss a single event in 4 of the 5 summers they are renovating. A huge thanks to PCL for getting us all personal protective equipment and being so gracious with their time during their very busy season. INVEST IN GREEN ENERGY District Energy/Ever-Green Energy facilitated an introduction to Toronto-based district energy company Enwave, who was a gracious host and partner in supporting a panel discussion on sustainable energy and buildings. They also provided a tour of "The Well," a visionary 3 million square foot mixed use project that features an innovative approach to storing renewable thermal energy (heating or cooling) in a 2 million gallon water tank beneath the building. How “cool” is that? This energy system is fully integrated with Enwave’s Deep Lake Water Cooling (DLWC) system, a sustainable energy project that utilizes the very cool temperature of Lake Ontario to provide cooling to over 100 buildings in downtown Toronto. One noteworthy takeaway from our engagement with Enwave is seeing the level of collaboration occurring in Toronto between the private sector and local, provincial, and federal levels of government to move sustainable energy and infrastructure projects from concept to reality. It was informative and motivating for our ICLV group to learn from our friends on what is possible through collaboration – I know our Greater MSP region already is working on new energy projects and creative ideas to advance our community’s energy systems and am excited about the future! CONTINUE TO INVEST IN DIVERSITY OF LEADERSHIP Though our hosts referenced the diversity of its citizenry (46% diverse), the region struggles with diversity at leadership levels. One female mayor we spoke with indicated that only approximately 20% of elected leaders are women. And we saw very little BIPOC representation among our hosts. It is important for our region to continue investing in ever more diverse leadership as well. ULTIMATELY, DON’T BE AFRAID TO THINK BIG We met the Mayor of Kitchener, Ontario, the “Silicon Valley of the North.” Kitchener and its sister city Waterloo, are the innovation hub of Ontario, with very creative strategies to invest in entrepreneurs, commercialization of technology, innovative companies. Very exciting ideas around P3 partnerships (public, private, philanthropy) as it relates to investing in incubators and pursuing companies to relocate and grow there. Great MSP always provides a helpful regional comparison on our host city: As two of the largest cold-weather metro areas in North America, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul region and the Toronto region share similarities. Each are centers of business headquarters, home to a half-dozen Fortune Global 500 companies and many other large private-sector employers. The regions benefit from highly educated workforces, with more than half of adult residents in the Greater MSP region and Toronto having attained postsecondary degrees. The regions have similarly high median household incomes – approximately $86,000 USD – and slow population growth, bolstered by international immigrants. Minneapolis-Saint Paul and the Toronto region also have notable differences. The two exist within different federal and local governance structures. With a population of 6.2 million, the Toronto region is the largest in Canada and is 68% larger than the Greater MSP region’s population of 3.7 million. Toronto is a superstar metro at the center of the smaller Canadian economy, anchored by major financial institutions, while the Greater MSP region is one star in a constellation of many within the world’s largest economy, with major companies in a variety of sectors. Toronto is much more racially diverse, with just 43% of residents identifying as non-Hispanic White, compared with 74% in the Greater MSP region, with especially large South Asian (19% of regional residents) and East Asian (13%) communities. Though each metro area benefits from international immigration, half of Toronto region’s residents are foreign-born, compared with 11% of the Greater MSP region’s residents. Affordability and economic inclusion remain persistent challenges for both regions. Nearly half of the Greater MSP region’s renters are cost-burdened, and the region’s residents pay comparatively high prices for utilities, childcare, and groceries. Meanwhile, real estate is notoriously expensive in Toronto, with per-square-foot home prices more than 3.3x greater than Minneapolis. And in both metros more than one in four households earns less than $50,000 USD per year. Our learning won’t stop here. We plan to dig deeper into the diversity issues and workforce development with our friends from RBC, for example. ICLV is meant to spark our thinking, now it’s up to us to make use of these new ideas. See you in the trenches, B |
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