Chamber speaker delivers economy views
The Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce membership luncheon at Pastabilities & More in Fort Myers Thursday, Feb. 12, featured guest speaker James Moore, executive director for the Lee County Office of Economical Development.
Moore, the chief business officer for the Lee County School Board in 2004, spoke on economic incentives and business opportunities to attract diversifying companies to the area and gave insight on the local financial market projections. He also talked about his office’s functions.
“Our job is to diversify the local economy,” he said. “That means we try to attract businesses and help businesses expand where over half their revenues come from outside the state border and they are not dependent on our economy.
“(These businesses) bring high-wage jobs to our area, so it diversifies the economy by the type of business and hopefully will alleviate some of the problems we see today by having our economy be one that sits on a three-legged stool which we all know is tourism, construction and development in the service industry. When we get a hiccup in one of them, the stool falls over.”
Moore then explained his office’s function to staff three organizations: 1) the Horizon Council, the public private partnership in Lee County who advocate and enable a growing and expanding diversified economy; 2) the Horizon Foundation, the fundraising part of the council; and 3) the Industrial Development Authority, the channel for tax-free financing for area businesses.
Moore’s office has also hired a new advertising agency that specializes in economic development to help differentiate this county from other competitive counties or states.
“Everybody wants low-carbon footprint, high-tech and biotech,” Moore said. “We’re competing with all the constituencies in this country and globally in some cases. That becomes very difficult.
He added that targeting diversifying companies to the southwest side of the Sunshine State is possible due to their business or social ties to the area.
“I called 10 of the companies in size that are diversifying and every one of them had ties to this area before relocating here,” Moore said. “They had a relative here, a friend here, they vacationed here. They said, ‘I can move my business here’ and they did. Those are the people that we are interested in and are focusing our marketing and sales effort on – people who own or control nonpublic companies who make decisions.”
Moore then challenged the chamber members to help his office attract the individuals who have influence in moving their large, successful companies down here.
“Our individual task forces are trying to identify these principals that I just described,” he said. “They’re here. They’re in their second homes right now or on vacation right now and you know who they are. I don’t know who they are. All we want is a chance to talk to them. If you help me, we’ll get some of them to move here.
“Why is that important to Fort Myers Beach? If they’re here, their friends will come to visit, their families come to visit, and they’re having business meetings here.”
Moore also mentioned the Boston Red Sox and that Lee County did not allow the baseball team to relocate.
“The vision the county has for this is not just the Boston Red Sox, it is the concept of baseball and tennis and swimming providing year-round opportunities for people who come here and use the facilities,” he said. “It’s not my expertise, but I do know after helping to get an economic study done, it shows the actual cost benefit of the relationship of sports and facilities to the overall economy.
“If we can take sports in Lee County and make it a year-round proposition, then we will have done very, very well in terms of having attraction. The Boston contract calls for them to help us with economic development.”
The banking crisis across the nation is also not helping Lee County’s economy.
Moore not only works in economical development, he is currently the chairman of the Board of Directors at Florida Gulf Bank and of the Finance & Investment Committee at Investor’s for the Security Trust Company and Edison Insurance Company.
He offered expert insight on how the banking crisis is currently effects Lee County.
“Until the (banking) market is freed up, you’re not going to have the money to fund or refund all these obligations that are now frozen in foreclosed mortgages,” he said. “Banks only do 20 percent of the lending in this country. Most of the lending comes from the securitization of debt. That debt is bought and sold in forms of bonds and other collateralized debt obligations from individuals and institutions including government here and abroad. And that market is totally dried up.
Moore’s projection for recovery in the market isn’t until next year.
“I think the second half (of 2009) is going to probably flatten out and, if we’re all very lucky, it will start to turn up in 2010,” he said. “In my mind, it depends how quickly we’ll be able to deal with the resolutions of the collateralized debt obligations and premium credit markets, not banking markets.”