Despite all the “gobblygook” from media pundits, our
local economy is thriving. Yes, we are impacted like
everyone else from the world-wide financial crisis, but
as our retreat facilitator stated on September 17th,
there’s no better place in the United States to weather
this storm. We agree!
And
speaking of our Board planning retreat, Jon Hockenyos of
Texas Perspectives facilitated and reviewed present
economic conditions since our July quarterly Board
meeting and then divided the participants into working
groups to outline strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
and threats in the Comal County/New Braunfels area.
Downtown re-development, airport re-development, and
expansion of the local medical/health services sector
were three key areas brought out from the session. Hockenyos reminded us that organizations like ours can
play a key role via becoming a vehicle for strategic
direction on an annual basis, becoming a forum on issues
impacting economic development, facilitating
communication to the community, and providing gap
funding for projects.
Our
Board luncheon October 14 received a presentation on the
base realignment and closure (BRAC) process as it
relates to the medical sector in San Antonio,
specifically Ft. Sam Houston. The economic impact of
the 2005 BRAC on this region is about double that of
Toyota with over 5,000 jobs plus 4,000 additional
students. Now that’s a lot of impact! The reason why
we wanted to learn more about the medical sector growth
in San Antonio is we don’t want to reinvent the wheel
for our efforts in medical services recruitment. Our
retreat facilitator has listed various local initiatives
and strategies that we can undertake ( click
here for more information).
Your
Foundation is a partner with the city in two projects
that will pay dividends for wealth creation in the
future. First, we contributed to the
Downtown Visioning
Plan and the hiring of a consultant that will soon be
chosen by the city. A member of our Board has been
added to the Downtown Visioning Committee so that more
communication and expertise is added to that group
during this process. We also contributed to the
Talent
Project, along with the city, county, Chamber, and Christus Santa Rosa
- New Braunfels. That project will
help quantify the community projects we need to have to
attract the “creative class” and give local government
entities and organizations input on the various assets
that we need to have to grow our economy.
Our
staff continues on an aggressive trade missions schedule
and we have outlined many details of those missions in
this newsletter. The old saying that “you gotta ask for
the order” still rings true today and in our current
economy more outreach programs are necessary to bring as
much investment and jobs to the community as we can.
Finally, our newsletter will update you on
all the latest projects either underway or about to be
underway. Your Foundation is a true partner in the
Build NB effort and your contribution in time, money and
talent makes that happen. Thanks!
Barry Williams
GNBEDF Chairman
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