What is a Green Job?

Last week, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry released The Pennsylvania Green Jobs Survey Report, which showed that the Lehigh Valley is both a current leader in green jobs in PA and will have the greatest growth in the sector in the state.
This is tremendous news. L&I's definition of a green job is one that "employ[s] workers in producing or offering products or services that:

• Promote energy efficiency
• Contribute to the sustainable use of resources or renewable energy
• Prevent pollution
• Clean up the environment
• Promote the reduction of harmful emissions
• Provide green education/training, awareness or compliance"

We should see increases in the numbers of green manufacturing jobs as firms like fiberAmerica scale up. Waste-to-energy project proposals are starting to cross the desks of business development professionals across the Lehigh Valley. And with a company like PPL anchoring our downtown, you can expect to see many of their employees qualify for "green job" designation.
But, in the context of urban manufacturing, we have a slightly different take on green jobs. We believe that any time a firm chooses to locate in a dense urban environment, they are creating green jobs. By choosing an urban site over a suburban site, that firm contributes to the sustainable use of resources by not creating demand for new transportation and utilities infrastructure. They are preventing pollution by locating near their workforce, reducing vehicle miles traveled in our region. Compliance with regulations in place in dense urban environments makes it easy to promote the reduction of harmful emissions.
It gets even better when a firm, faced with the decision of building on a greenfield in a rural area or building on a brownfield in an urban environment, goes the route of reusing existing industrial sites. The brownfield firm will employ environmental services firms to assist with the cleanup from past polluters. They also, through their example, provide "green" awareness. Since they will naturally choose to build to EnergyStar standards, they will also promote energy efficiency with their new building.
So good for us that we project so many green jobs in the future. Better for us that we have so many dense urban environments offering an opportunity to create a REAL green job.

Why AEDC Is Investing in Coworking

Work progresses on the creation of coworking space in the Lehigh Valley. We've met with many independent professionals that have told us about what they expect from the space, including ample networking opportunities, reliable WiFi, limited distractions, and good parking. We hope we can meet all the demands on their wish list and look forward to continued input. While we have met with entrepreneurs, we have also had an opportunity to explain to them why we are investing in the concept.

Coworking in San Francisco

One of AEDC's core strategies in encouraging strategic business opportunities for the benefit of Allentown is to attract innovative people to the city. One way that we hope to do that is to promote entrepreneurship in the Lehigh Valley. Coworking space will provide an environment for networks of creative, independent professionals to work together and grow their businesses. Collaboration should lead to new firm starts and ultimately job opportunities for Allentonians. Professionals in transition can hatch business plans from the community tables with the support of enterprise development professionals and their coworking colleagues. This will boost entrepreneurship in general.


Another big reason for investing in this kind of space to attract innovative people to the city is that we know that regions where people want to live do things like this. Cities that don't have things like this are typically places where creative professionals and entrepreneurs do not want to live. Spaces like this are already popping up all around us, from Lancaster to Philadelphia to New York City. We plan to be their equal.


We expect this to be successful and we want to let you know why.

LVEDC Annual Meeting 2011 Recap

After Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation's Annual Investor Meeting on January 20, 2011, their keynote speaker, Christopher Leinbeger took the stage to speak about walkable urbanism.

Leinberger, a visting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is recognized as one of the leading thinkers on strategic downtown redevelopment and walkability. His presentation covered some national trends, outlining the ways that we used to live, how we got off course, and how a new generation is steering development toward sustainability. His points that resonated with the crowd were that we are heavily subsidizing unsustainable development, we have made walkable urban development illegal and that suburban living shifts a signifcant portion of a family's income from discretionary spending to transportation.

He also supplied the Lehigh Valley with a to-do list (his to-do items in italics, our commentary afterward):

1) Visit comp[arable metropolitan area]s: Chattanooga, Boise, Lancaster. We might have some difficulty getting to Boise, Idaho but Lancaster is a 90-minute drive from here. Check out AEDC's experiences with co-working in Lancaster.

2) Understand "export" industries & business/employee locational requirements. LVEDC and the Lehigh Valley Workforce Investment Board have begun this work. Healthcare and higher education dominate employment in the Lehigh Valley, although research by the LVEDC and the WIB has that there are six industrial clusters present.

3) IF knowledge economy, determine where your walkable urban places will be and make it legal to build them (LANTA's toolkit). Mr. Leinberger suggested that we not only develop our existing urban cores, but begin the long process of rebuilding the suburbs as walkable places as well as build new communities. At AEDC, we would like to see efforts concentrated on our existing urban environments and if the Lehigh Valley builds new communities, we hope that they are built on brownfield sites rather than farms and open spaces.

4) Plan a transit system (even rail) to get you there, recognizing you will pay for it locally (tax increases & private value capture). After the meeting, Leinberger had a conversation with members of the Lehigh Valley economic development community, and expounded on this notion. He suggested that the return on an investment in a transit system would be significant and encouraged us to think streetcars rather than commuter rail.

5) Develop non-profit management. Much of this effort needs committed civic leadership and nonprofit management. Business improvement districts can help steer development in the right direction.

We hope to expand on some of these thoughts in blog posts over the year, so stay tuned here.

Walkable Urbanism and Manufacturing

If you follow the various media streams from AEDC, you will know that one of our major initiatives is to promote urban manufacturing. For a variety of reasons, we believe that strengthening manufacturing in dense urban environments will help lead to economic recovery and define local economies in the next 15 years. One of the major benefits to manufacturers is that they have tremendous access to their workforce. 

Industrialization in the United States and in the Lehigh Valley had a tremendous impact on location decisions for families. Prior to the invention of the automobile, manufacturers built factories and often built worker housing close to those factories. Workers could easily get to their jobs and communities developed around certain industries. There were a lot of bad things associated with this early period of industrialization, but working close to where one lived was not one of them.

As factories and production changed, the relationship between factories and workers changed as well. Urban density made building new, sprawling factories in city centers difficult and people did not want smokestacks in their back yards. For these and a whole host of other reasons, factories and people started moving to suburban environments, which were wholly dependent on the automobile. This trend continued to very recent times and is still the choice for some less forward-thinking companies.

Changes to both manufacturing and personal location decision-making have opened up new possibilities. In many ways, manufacturing no longer looks like it did in 1890, but it also doesn’t look much like it did in 1990. Most manufacturing processes have gotten religion when it comes to environmental sustainability, doing away with belching smokestacks and noise pollution. Smart manufacturers are also going lean, doing away with the need to have enormous warehouses to house enormous inventories. It is entirely possible for them to be in dense, urban environments again. 

People have shifted their preferences to downtown living, choosing to be close to amenities and jobs. You can see this at play in places like Chicago, where population growth in the downtown has outstripped population growth in their vast suburbs. Most of these folks have been office workers and creative professionals, whose jobs are in downtowns. But people who build trucks and make epoxy have the same basic desire to live near restaurants, entertainment and their work. 

So smart companies should look to be in urban environments where they can access a great labor pool and eschew sprawling greenfields where they cannot be reached by the people that want to work for them. Walkable urbanism works for manufacturers too.

Show & Tell at Hive 4A Recap

On Monday, January 17 AEDC hosted MakeLV's first Show & Tell event at the hackspace at Hive 4A, in the Bridgeworks Enterprise Center. Tinkerers and hobbyists from Pennsylvania and New Jersey came to the Lehigh Valley to network, talk about projects, exchange knowledge and eat pizza. 

The crowd included members of MakeLV, a group of Lehigh Valley hackers working on a wide variety of projects and the driving force behind the establishment of the hackspace at Hive 4A. Tyler Worman, of MakeLV, helped organize the event and maintains the MakeLV wiki. Also in attendance were Amy and Tony Buser of Berks CoLab, a Reading, PA group working toward the creation of a Berks County makerspace. 

Tony Buser gave a demonstration of his RepRap, a 3D printer that fits on a desktop. He made the machine himself, using parts that he made with a makerbot. RepRaps are self-replicating, so he has used the machine to make the parts that other users will need to build their own printers. Tony told a story about breaking a latch on his screen door, and going to his basement to recreate the part on the printer rather than needing to head to the hardware store.

Tyler gave a description of the difficulties of making 3D scans for 3D printing and showed off his homemade 3D scanner, cobbled together using an inexpensive laser and a PlayStation 3 camera. 

MakeLV will continue to strive toward a fully-productive hackspace at Hive 4A over the next few months. A collaborative work environment will allow MakeLV members to work together on projects using shared equipment and generate new ideas. MakeLV will hold a business meeting in the first week of February to discuss governance.

The next MakeLV Show & Tell at Hive 4A is in planning and should be announced shortly. 

Coworking at Hive 4A Update

AEDC's entrepreneurial development initiative, Hive 4A, had a busy 7 days last week. 

Coworking Info Session

On January 10, a group of independent professionals working out of the Lehigh Valley gathered at the Bridgeworks Enteprise Center to discuss the creation of a coworking community in Allentown. Like many coworking spaces, the Lehigh Valley group is comprised of mostly creative professionals, including photographers, freelance writers and video editors, but also included a serial entrepreneur, jobseekers, and a financial planning professional. The group members discussed their space needs and what they hoped to gain from coworking, focusing mostly on the wide variety of opportunities for intragroup collaboration and low-cost access to shared services. The group finished with a tour of the space that AEDC has proposed to dedicate to coworking at Hive 4A, a 2,240 square foot area with 15' ceilings and copious natural light. If the group grows out of the space, AEDC has an additional 1,000 square feet that it would incorporate into the coworking space. Since this initial meeting a number of local professionals have inquired into getting involved. One of the results of the meeting was the creation of a Meetup group. 

Field Trip to Lancaster

The next day, Matthew from AEDC made a trip to the Candy Factory in Lancaster, PA to meet with one of the space's founders Anne Kirby. Becuase he arrived a little early, he had a chance to take the space for a test drive. "They really have a great thing going there," reported Matthew. In only 7 months of existence, they have recruited over 30 area professionals and are in the process of expanding in their building. Their group hatched from an existing arts group that increasingly demanded shared working space, until one of the members launched the Candy Factory. They employ a membership structure similar to the one that AEDC has proposed, with grades of membership allowing for access to community tables up through semi-private office space. The space itself is another amazing effort, featuring local artwork and great atmospherics in a prime, downtown location.

Coworking

Learn more about coworking at the Coworking Wiki. In brief, coworking offers independent professionals an opportunity to be part of a work community by sharing space. Unlike executive suites, coworking asks members to sit next to each other, sharing ideas and collaborating on projects. Coworking is an excellent alternative to working from home, where a person's work has to compete for attention with things like animals, kids, and dirty dishes. It is also a great alternative to working out of the local coffee shop, where $5 lattes can price business people out of the market and chatty baristas can erode value. Think of a coworking space as you would the college library, full of like-minded individuals concentrated on work, elbow-to-elbow with the creative peers that can help them create something great.

CoWorking Lehigh Valley Info Session

On Monday, January 10 at 9 a.m. Allentown Economic Development Corporation (AEDC) will hold an information session on CoWorking in the Lehigh Valley. The meeting will take place in AEDC's Bridgeworks Enterprise Center at 905 Harrison, Allentown, PA.

CoWorking is a fairly new approach to getting work done, and has been described by many as the future of work. The idea is that independent professionals work better together than they do alone. To facilitate this, coWorking spaces have popped up around the country to allow people to work together. The space is for people who want to work from home, but soon discover that home is full of distractions that prevent one from getting any work done. The space is also an alternative to the "Starbucks office" of the local coffee shop, allowing people who are serious about work to do their jobs without the distractions of being in a retail environment.

In Allentown, coWorking will soon take place at the Bridgeworks as part of Hive 4A. AEDC has dedicated over 3,000 square feet of space in its business incubator to a coWorking space. The space will feature no fewer than 18 seats at community work tables, six dedicated desks in the open floor plan, shared conference facilities, lounge space, a kitchenette, shared reception, wifi and some of the brightest creatives in the Lehigh Valley. Basic membership in the Hive will allow members access to all services and a seat at a community table, while full membership will purchase a 24/7 seat at a desk. Additionally, AEDC will open its Home Office Alternative offices to the Hive, providing 5 private offices to businesses wanting to tap into the creativity.

AEDC will execute the project with the assistance of inaugural members, the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, Corporate Facilities of the Lehigh Valley, and the support of the Bridgeworks Enterprise Center staff. Members will benefit not only from being part of a great collaborative environment, but from being right next to tremendous entrepreneurial development resources designed to help businesses take the next step toward success.

Learn more by joining the conversation on Monday, January 10 at 9 a.m. For more information, contact AEDC at info@allentownedc.com or call 610.435.8890

Positive Small Business Story

When Terry Sands purchased the Chevrolet dealership in Allentown, he had no idea he would be forced to close the business a short while later. GM notified Sands that he would have to shut down Sands Chevrolet only 18 months after he opened.

Sands didn’t let GM stop him from reaching success, though. Even though Sands Chevrolet officially closed Oct. 31, Sands opened a new business less than a month later. Meineke Car Care Center and Econo Lube N’ Tune opened in Allentown on Nov. 29 at 1211 Hanover Ave.

Sands opened Meineke and Econo Lube, which are part of Driven Brands, parent company to six franchised automotive brands, through Driven Brands’ Jump Start program. The program offers dealerships faced with closing their doors or becoming used car service dealers the opportunity to become franchisees of the company’s nationally recognized brands at highly discounted costs.

By opening Meineke, Sands was able to maintain most of his employees and continue selling and servicing vehicles. He also has maintained his current customer base. For more information, visit www.meineke.com.