Well, we'll do it.

Alright, we will call the work session to order, and uh counselor fort, maybe a few minutes late, but should be coming.

And uh we appreciate this economic development topic, and we have Evan Raleigh here uh in lieu of Marshall Adams David.

Yes, so good afternoon, Mayor, members of council.

So uh we have with us Cal Touchstone today with uh the director of Raleigh Economic Development at the Chamber of Commerce to give you a rundown on uh the activities that uh he and his team have been undertaking for us on our behalf uh to promote economic development uh throughout the city and give you a glimpse into their future uh work plans.

Uh so with that, I'll turn it over to Kyle Tushtone.

Thank you so much.

Uh, good afternoon, mayor, counsel.

Good to see you all.

I know that I stand between you and hopefully a win tonight by the hurricanes.

So um I will uh go through a presentation, give you an overview of some of the things that we've been working on, where we are today and kind of what what's ahead for us.

Um, and appreciate this opportunity to do so.

So Raleigh Economic Development, we exist to raise awareness that Raleigh is the premier locale for jobs, business, talent, and innovation committed to helping businesses thrive within Raleigh and offer support in the areas of recruitment retention and expansion to help them grow and prosper.

So the red acronym new.

It's it's been there since it started, and I honestly wondered when we were going through the whole branding exercise why we didn't go why we didn't go with the color red, but the marketing the marketing experts told me no.

Um has its advantages.

We work hand in hand on uh most, if not all projects, and um really enjoy that partnership.

Um, with me today also is Gabe is Gabriel El Hashash, who is economic development coordinator.

We are a team of two.

We are lean and mean, and um excited to work on behalf of the city of Raleigh.

So what I wanted to share here is kind of the breakdown of our budget.

So one hundred percent of Raleigh Economic Development's funding comes from you, the City of Raleigh.

So congratulations on the budget that you approved yesterday, and we greatly appreciate the support for Raleigh economic development in that budget.

Um, the Greater Raleigh Chamber does provide um in-kind services such as office space, technology, uh, administration, and finance uh personnel.

But one hundred percent of our funding does come from the city of Raleigh, and that breakdown, um, you know, we really wanted to show that this, we do spend our dollars on actual uh work.

So just under 40% is spent on marketing and public relations, and then uh right around 24% is on project development and management, with the other just under 40% being for employee expenses.

So what do we do?

You know, a lot of people, a lot of people I think know what economic development is, but economic development is really for us focused on building the relationships that help companies find their location to grow, to uh locate, but also working to help define quality of place and all of those initiatives that um really make this a wonderful place to live and for talent to come here and to stay here for companies to then take advantage of that and hire them and move here to hire our great talent.

So, you know, that's in the form of business recruitment, business retention and expansion, but we spend a lot of our time marketing, and when companies are making their decisions on where to go, they're either using someone internally, a commercial real estate broker, or something that's called a site selection consultant.

So we spend a lot of our time nurturing and building these relationships with site selection consultants.

The majority of the companies that have located here that we've worked with have worked with the site selection consultant.

Those site selection consultants kind of make it take the ease or take the hard work out of it for these companies and provide um comprehensive services of looking at thousands of data points to help them determine where the best location for them to be would be.

And the city of Raleigh continues to show up as a top market for many of these companies, and um so through this we get project activity, and this quarter we've had we are currently working 20 active economic development projects, and by 20 active economic development projects, that means that projects that we have been talking to, continue talking to within the last 60 days.

Um, and those 20 projects represent uh a potential of three billion dollars in capital investment, and could potentially hire 8,600 uh employees and create those jobs here.

Forty five percent of that is in manufacturing, which is uh quite an uptick for us.

We've mostly been seen as an office market, but we've had some uh industrial inventory come on the market, but also some industrial land that um is available.

Um but then headquarters still represents about 25% of our projects, five percent in technology, but 25% showing up in engineering services, aviation, and other type projects.

Just one quick question.

The 8,600.

I know this past year we just announced we had 13,000 jobs in Wake County.

So is this countywide?

And then how do you feel about the 8,600 versus last year's 13,000?

Right.

So these numbers that I'm showing you today are just projects that are looking at the city of Raleigh within Wake County, so they're part of Wake County's projected numbers as well, but then we drill down to where it's just the city of Raleigh.

You know, on some of these projects there it depends on ultimately the project.

Some do a nationwide search.

Some by the time that they get to us, they are they're down to four or five locations.

And so, you know, we really um are hopeful that when these companies come to us and can and start these conversations that we are you know on a shorter list.

Um, however, we do know that there are some on this list that have done nationwide searches and they've just done a blanket search.

Um but primarily these are projects that we are either hosting, planning to host, or have shortlisted us.

So a cumulative number, so over since October 1, which is our um the beginning of our fiscal year, uh we've had 47 projects representing 13,000 potential uh new jobs and 16 billion dollars in capital investment.

If you notice there are some large billion dollar potential investors out there, so most times this represents some large advanced manufacturing projects that have been focused on our area, and they are primarily in things like robotics or in autonomous vehicles, and I know that that has been an interest uh in the past by some of our council members, but um some of this looks at the assembly of autonomous vehicles.

So some of these do carry a pretty large uh investment amount.

So, looking at our economic impact since Raleigh Economic Development returned to the chamber in 2021, we've announced eight projects.

These projects didn't start announcing until 2023.

Our first announcement was early in December of 2023, that was in Divier, then it was followed by uh Utamar Piquet in January of 2024.

But out of these eight projects that we've announced, that represents 1,487 new jobs and 139.8 million in capital investment.

These are primarily office um projects that were lower investment, they're going into buildings that have already been built, they're doing upfit costs, furniture fixtures and equipment, so desks, computers, and then going to work.

So the investment numbers are lower than having to go build a building, and so what does this mean for your investment?

So the total budget for Raleigh Economic Development since 2021 has been just over 1.6 million.