New economic development director: 'Ingredients are here'
By JR Ross
Tim Cooley had a simple question for the business community as he made his first contacts as Madison’s new economic development director: What if anything can the city do to make your life easier right now?
For a city that has been dinged with a reputation as a difficult place to do business, it may have been a refreshing approach for some.
Cooley, a graduate of Madison East High School and UW-Madison, came back to Wisconsin in mid-February after almost three decades in California, some of it spent working on economic development.
He said he had been back to the area frequently in his time away to see family and friends. But he didn’t really uncover what was going on in Madison on the development front until he spoke with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation about a position and fell in love with the area all over again.
He jumped at the chance to apply for the post after Bill Clingan withdrew his name from consideration for the job after an uproar from the business community.
And now he hopes to make Madison his last stop.
“I’ve always loved the area,” Cooley said. “I had never taken a look at it from a competitive perspective. Once I did, I realized there’s a whole lot going on, but it’s really a lousy time in the cycle. But that’s not going to last forever.”
Q: Now, this is your background and you hadn’t really heard about what’s going on in Madison until you came back to talk to WARF. Is that a sign that the city hasn’t been doing a good enough job selling these things or publicizing these things to people?
A: Yeah, partially. I’ve been asked a couple of times, what’s Madison’s perception? They don’t have one. The perception they do have is a cool city a little right of Berkley as far as its political attitude goes, a good research university. But they have no idea of what’s going on here as far as industry or business. They don’t have an appreciation for what I think are great advantages, the character of the neighborhoods, the character of the city, the character of the characters. It doesn’t show up on anybody’s initial scan that is doing a site selection from outside of the area, especially if you’re coming in from Europe or Asia. It just isn’t there. Now that should change because of what is going on here, and part of the job that I’m going to have, along with what Thrive is doing, along with some other groups, is positioning and branding the area. We did that in southern California. I came up with the concept of the “tech coast.” What politicians have a hard time dealing with is that capital, innovation and talent don’t care. They don’t care where the city limits are. They don’t care where the county limits are. They don’t even care where the state limits are. They go where it makes sense for them to be. The question is do we have the critical mass here for certain clusters of business to come and want to locate here for competitive advantages? Once we have those, then they develop the economy for what I call the derivative business, the ancillary businesses, the law firms, the accounting firms, the dry cleaners, the veterinarians, the doctors, the health-care cluster, whatever it might be. Those function as a derivative of companies that bring wealth into the area by exporting goods or services out.
Q: The perception of Madison has been that it’s anti-business. Does that just exist in Madison, or does that exist outside of the city as well?
A: Yeah, I get that all the time. Again, there isn’t any perception outside of the city unless it’s Milwaukee, and I don’t know what they think or Oshkosh or Kenosha or Eau Claire. As far as outside of Madison, I don’t think it shows up. If you do a search, what you’re going to get is a long list of “best” rankings. As far as the reality of that, if it’s repeated long enough, perception almost becomes the reality. But when I’ve taken a look and drilled down a little bit, yeah, things have been changing and things have been changing in the right direction. I’m going to be a little bit like the canary in the mine. I’m going to be part of the process. So if the process frustrates me, I can only imagine what it’s doing to the businessman. I’m not interested in a whole lot of bureaucratic process. I’m more interested in having a clear vision of where we want to be and finding a way of getting there without rearranging chairs on a sinking boat.
Q: The university seems to be driving a large biotech boom in Madison. Does that make your life easier in this new job because you have a driver like that?
A: Oh, sure. It’s one of the things that brought me back here. I mean, the determinants of a high-tech, high-growth area are things like a major research university, good transportation, cultural activities, excellence of schools, airport, preferably a hub, which is an issue that Dane County needs to look at as far as maintaining Dane County Airport and the flights coming in and out, neighborhood character. We’ve got that. The ingredients are really here. From that perspective, my job is easier as far as starting out with a clean slate or something that’s nothing but a residential area. From the position of taking the success that has happened in the Willy Street and Marquette neighborhood and Monroe-Dudgeon and certainly the Square and State Street and being able to now take that to the North Side and the East Washington corridor and the South Side and being able to also replicate it in those types of areas in developing those neighborhoods, I think is part of the challenge but also part of the opportunity for the area.
Q: What’s the measure for success for you in this job?
A: It’s not all about numbers of jobs. People make the mistake of counting numbers without looking at the quality of those jobs. I think it’s really taking a look at what the GDP of the area is, what our export numbers look like, what we’re actually putting outside the area and bringing cash in to be able to support the values. How well we work and end up working as a region. The reality is the suburbs are dependent upon the core. The core is dependent upon the suburbs and how that all works out. I want to meet with the other mayors and their economic development people. What Jennifer Alexander is doing at Thrive, I think, is important to the region. What’s the cover of Fortune look like in 20 years about the Madison miracle and what’s the story inside say as to what we did?
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Contact Tim Cooley at 608-261-9883 or via e-mail at tcooley@cityofmadison.com. His office is located at 215 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. #312, Madison, WI 53701
