Newsom announces stimulus plan for S.F.

The Annual Mayor's Economic Forecast took place on the 11th of February, as planned.

This is what came out of it : "San Francisco officials are preparing an economic stimulus package they hope will spur spending and job growth to loosen the recession’s tightening grip on the city" says the San Francisco Biz Journal on the 11th

The newly unveiled local stimulus program will include a "new jobs payroll tax credit", " loans available to small companies", essentially "micro-loans" and "larger no-interest loans to businesses", property tax rebates (50%) for "unsecured property - things like new machinery, equipment or office furniture - if the goods -were bought in San Francisco".

In a recently published white paper
(http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/mayor/PressRoom/NewsReleases/White%20Paper.pdf), Newsom goes into more details about his update plan for the city:

"While San Francisco is widely considered one of the strongest urban markets in the county, with solid long-term prospects, economists also generally agree that the current recession is beginning to hit the City hard, and San Francisco, like the rest of the country, will not come out of this recession for some time." he starts out with.

" San Francisco’s economy is driven by the success and growth of (i) advanced knowledge-based services, like financial and professional services, life sciences, digital media / IT and (ii) tourism." These sectors should therefore be strategically developed.

The strategy for stimulating and supporting the local economy is fivefold, (nothing new here) :
"(i) accelerating capital spending, (ii) keeping local dollars local by investing in local businesses, (iii) reducing the burdens, local government places on local businesses (iv) supporting our workforce and (v) attracting more foreign investment in San Francisco.

Without going into details about the 4 first steps, these are both attractive and interesting for local businesses and good incentives for non-local companies to set up and hire locally, thus making step V much easier. For instance, they plan on working on the "bottom line issues
regarding how expensive it is to do business in San Francisco versus other cities", which will improve the city's busines reputation. They also plan on "expanding the Utilization of Existing Tax Incentive Programs".

Here's what Newsom says on foreign investment, btw :
" San Francisco’s role as an international City helps drive business to San Francisco in both the tourism and commercial sectors. Through the Office of International Trade and Commerce, the City has long had a number of international programs targeted at bringing business and tourism to the City and fostering cultural and economic exchanges." These activities include the "new Paris Investment office", " supporting the Sister City program with economic development emphasis" (reminder : Shanghai has been San Francisco's sister city since 1979); and more.

The ChinaSF initiative has quite a long blurb dedicated to it :

"However, until recently the City did not have any overseas offices focused exclusively on increasing commercial business opportunities with San Francisco. In November of 2008, the City launched ChinaSF with potentially its biggest trading partner – China. ChinaSF capitalizes on the City's inherent strengths – 150 year-old ties with China, a very large Asian population, a large Pacific Rim airport, a strong international reputation- to firmly establish San Francisco as the premier gateway between Chinese businesses and North America. ChinaSF opened offices in San Francisco and Shanghai in November 2008. This initiative aggressively pursues bringing Chinese companies in the City's key growth industries (cleantech, life sciences, digital media, professional services) to San Francisco, as well as Chinese commercial product companies looking to establish a stateside presence to sell into the North American market. ChinaSF also helps local business seeking to do business in China. Already, ChinaSF is reaping major dividends. Through the work of ChinaSF, two major Chinese companies have selected San Francisco for key business operations. Trina Solar, a NYSE listed Chinese solar manufacturer, recently chose San Francisco for its North American Headquarters and China Daily, the national English-language newspaper of China also recently selected San Francisco for its West Coast operations office. These offices will bring both jobs and revenue to the City, as evidenced by the City’s experience with Suntech, a Chinese company that is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. As the result of a focused business attraction strategy led by the Mayor and OEWD, Suntech chose San Francisco as its North American headquarters in 2008 over Boston and Chicago. Although Suntech America started with only 5 employees last year, it has already grown to over 50 employees in the City. A number of other Chinese companies are in ChinaSF’s pipeline and should be finalized this year. In addition, ChinaSF recently helped a local architecture firm, Heller/Manus, win the largest contract in the firm’s history on a major project in China. ChinaSF is supported by private contributions from local business and is operated in partnership between OEWD and the non-profit San Francisco Center for Economic Development. "

All quotes, unless specifically mentioned otherwise, are from the Mayor's press room white paper.

For an executive summary of the white paper on the stimulus plan, click here: Executive Summary, straight from the Mayor's Press Room.

Attracting Chinese business and investment to San Francisco still a priority

As always, the SF chamber's mission is to attract, develop and retain business in San Francisco.

SO....
Despite these trying times, attracting Chinese business and investment to San Francisco is still billed one of the city's key initiatives to implement an economic stimulus plan - basically, jump start the state's economy again, something that is badly needed as the State has had to start giving out IOUs instead of actual money (See this article from the LA times... and many others on google).

At least that's what the SF Chamber says, both here :

The Chamber is vigorously pursuing key initiatives to improve the city's business vitality: Economic Stimulus : " The Chamber continues to encourage the city to adopt a long-range economic plan and is working with the city and business community on adoption and implementation of an economic stimulus plan. [...] In collaboration with the Mayor's Office and the San Francisco Center for Economic Development, the Chamber in 2008 launched the ChinaSF initiative to attract Chinese business and investment to San Francisco."

and in January's newsletter, in L.Wade Rose's address - he is the newly appointed SF Chamber Chair, by the way - :

"Our first priority will be to work with the city on the adoption and implementation of an economic stimulus plan. The plan as outlined by Mayor Gavin Newsom includes: Accelerating capital spending, keeping local dollars, increasing foreign investment and reducing the costs of doing business in San Francisco. For example, the Chamber is working with the Mayor’s Office and the SF Center for Economic Development on ChinaSF to attract Chinese companies and investment dollars to San Francisco – and has already scored two major Chinese companies, Trina Solar and China Daily newspaper."

It's all fine and good... but that's old news. WHAT are you doing exactly? Any (new) results yet?

Why a ChinaSF in San Francisco? Part Deux

Clearly, the San Francisco municipality is proud of establishing a ChinaSf office in their city.

More reasons on why San Francisco is the best city for such an initiative keep coming out.
Here's the SFgate's take on it :

First, because SF has awesome resources - "City officials are not shy in boasting that they beat out San Jose and Los Angeles, respectively, for the honors. Why San Francisco? "There are great resources for us there - a diversified workforce and cross-cultural variations," said Yimei Wong, a Trina Solar executive who will be managing the office. "

Second , because "Surely, San Francisco's demographics didn't hurt, either."

and third, because of the strong cultural ties San Francisco and Shanghai share :

"Cultural ties that bind: Asian Art Museum chief Jay Xu gave Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel, a truly expert tour of the ancient bronzes and other treasures at the Shanghai Art Museum Tuesday. The occasion: Our Asian Art Museum, it was announced, will host a major exhibit of contemporary art from Shanghai in February 2010. This is quite a big deal for art lovers. "A blockbuster, of King Tut levels," said one city official, perhaps overreaching a little. But it's also a sign of Newsom's concerted policy of solidifying San Francisco's relationship with China, a fact that Newsom and other city officials have repeatedly emphasized on this trip."

"And, of course, where culture flows, business often follows." (emphasis added)

So there you have it : extensive resources, demographics, cultural ties... apparently and (hopefully for San Francisco) are the keys to good (foreign) business relations.

Newsom back from China already?

Newsom's trip on the 10 of November to China was all over the web (if you know where to look), and it seems he's back already.

With good results though, since the China Desk Chinese counterpart was opened in Shanghai.

The goal, according to the Bizjournal San Francisco edition article is "a reciprocal relationship that benefits both sides" (quoting Newsom, of course), where incentives such as tax breaks, workforce developments, help setting up, finding real estate, in short, implementing an infrastructure of services, will get Chinese companies decide to move to San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Important info : the China Desk is no longer called the China Desk - its new name is ChinaSF Did not see that one coming! Guess I should change the name of my blog =(. Ooh wait, I can't.

In other news, new facts about the China Desk ... sorry ChinaSF :

• Ginny Fang will head the ChinaSF office in San Francisco. Ms. Fang was until recently a consultant to the City Hall on economic and workforce issues.
• Her advisory committee will include Assesor-Recorder Phil Ting (cf. previous post) as chair; "Mark Edmunds of Deloitte, Supervisor Carmen Chu, Arthur Gensler of Gensler architecture and many other well-known Bay Area business leaders."
• Funding, unlike the Chigago one (which has yet to see real results apparently, despite the hiring of John Thomson,English- and Mandarin-speaking former State Department diplomat and as such lauded expert in US-China Relations), will be entirely private, and will come from companies such as Deloitte & Touche (who already has several China Desks, such as the Israeli China Desk for instance), Barclays Global Investors, HOK, the law firm K&L Gates, Warburg Pincus, Gensler, United Commercial Bank, Stanford Hotels Group.
  Budget for the next three years : $1.5 million (only half funded yet)

Positive results already?

Newson has proudly announced at the opening ceremony two Chinese companies planning to locate to San Francisco. Trina Solar, a public company listed with the New York Stock Exchange, with 5,000 employees that manufactures solar modules, will open an office in the city in 2009 for US operations. China Daily, a national English-language daily newspaper in China, will also open its first West Coast Bureau in San Francisco. And... ambitious goals : "If we can hit that elusive tipping point and get enough Chinese companies to sign up with us," said Cohen [director of San Francisco's Office of Economic and Workforce Development], "in 10 or 15 years San Francisco really will be the North American gateway for China's business."

Looks like the project is starting out well...

"So you now also have a friend in San Francisco, and possibly in California,"

From the China Daily, outposted by the MasterChinese website :

"US city looks to better China ties" - San Francisco being the city mentioned here.

Mayor Newsom is to go to Shanghai on Wednesday to officially launch "a privately funded business recruitment initiative", the ChinaSF initiative, "to further relations with China".

The article addresses the usual WWWW,H questions :

WHY - "energy independence" i.e. "creating an innovative green economy and "a stronger relationship with China" . "China will be our godsend here in California and in America "

WHAT - "The ChinaSF initiative is designed to attract businesses to San Francisco".

WHO - "a joint initiative between the San Francisco Center for Economic Development and the city of San Francisco"; "a marquee advisory board that includes""former US secretary of state George Schultz; Jim Wunderman, chairman of the Bay Area Council; and Phil Ting, the city's highest-ranking Chinese-American elected to office.

WHERE - San Francisco, the Bay Area, Shanghai especially Pudong, Yangpu, Suzhou and "other business clusters"

HOW- privately funded, it "does not use taxpayers' money"."Instead, it is funded by service-sector businesses such as banks, law firms, consulting firms, commercial real estate companies, and architecture designers." "I [Newsom] can use numbers, firms recruited, money invested as metrics of this initiative's success, but the biggest thing can't be monetized. It's the human capital.

"So you now also have a friend in San Francisco, and possibly in California,"