← Econ Dev Show Podcast - Economic Development
Econ Dev Show Podcast - Economic Development
224: Building Trust Before Building Buildings with Janae Stark
00:25:50
Janae Stark explains how Washington’s Community Economic Revitalization Board helps rural communities and tribes build the public infrastructure, relationships, and project readiness needed to support jobs, private investment, and long-term local growth.
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Econ Dev Show. We explore the strategies, ideas and insights that are driving economic development forward into the future. You'll hear new insights from passionate EDs about their successes and struggles. And you'll learn from attraction and retention experts about how to apply actionable strategies inside your Edo. We'll help take your organization, your community and and your career to the next level. Here's your host, Dane Carlson.
- [00:35]
B
Welcome back to the Econ Dev Show. Today we're here with Janee Stark. She's the executive director and tribal liaison for Community Economic Revitalization Board in Washington State. Janae, welcome to the show.
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C
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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B
So for our listeners who don't know what is the Community Economic Revitalization Board.
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C
Yeah, so we are a unique agency in the state of Washington. We were created in 1982 by governor request legislation. So we're a state forward. We are housed within the Department of Commerce because we're a staff of two. But our mission is to primarily work with rural communities and federally recognized tribes to help them build public infrastructure to support businesses across the state, ultimately to create and retain jobs, leverage private investment and increase local tax revenue.
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B
So what was the. I get what it does, but why was it, why was it created? What was the problem?
- [01:30]
C
If you look back in the early 80s was not a great economic time. And Washington state is really known for what we lovingly call the fish and chip industry. So our timber and our salmon. And from my understanding, the idea was to help especially our rural communities really dependent on the fish and chip to diversify, to be able to recruit and retain other businesses in the area to help stabilize the economy and grow into the future and be stable. I will say in the pandemic, I did tease a lot of my communities as I spoke to some of our coastal communities about their businesses and shipping oysters to China. And that was our biggest export. And I was like, well, after 40 years we haven't, we haven't diversified. We're still, we're still have our oysters in one basket. So that's ultimately was the thought in the 80s was to also have low interest loans for communities. Interest rates were my understanding the high teens at that time. So we even have something in our statute that doesn't allow our interest rate to go over 10%, which sounds astronomical these days.
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B
So I read that you've been there since 2004. So what, you know, what's changed and what has surprisingly stayed exactly the same.
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C
So for the most part our statute and mission has stayed the Same. When I started here, we had a partnership with the agency we're housed in. Back then it was called Community Trade and Economic Development and they had staff, outreach staff across the region. When I started here, there was three, it went up to nine, then ultimately down to zero. But they were out in the communities actually building the projects and bringing the projects to the board for approval. In about 2011 those went away due to budget cuts and we are a small staff, staff of one at that time and had to take on doing that project development. So it really was an interesting time, but also a time we had to build with our communities because they were used to people being in their backyard that they would call, that they knew them by face. It took a lot of work for them to understand there was someone in Olympia who would answer their phone call. So that's probably the biggest change is that we just brought everything in house and we're far more dependent on ourselves versus being dependent on another agency for project development.
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B
Sure. So CERB has right Project, Right time approach. What does that mean in practice?
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C
Yeah, so we have a variety of programs that we fund products through and it starts with our planning program. So we have different levels of funding and different activities. We'll do so specifically traditional economic development site readiness as well as rural broadband planning. And so we work with the community, we do the project development with them. So they don't necessarily have to have a consultant or an engineer helping them. And we will just talk through what they're trying to achieve through planning through construction, ultimately who their community, community wants to be when they grow up. And we just help them every step of the way. And our board meets six times per year to approve projects. And so it's not a competitive process. It's not that one time of year where you kind of throw spaghetti against the wall, see what sticks. We just help them make sure that the time that they're submitting their application is truly the right time for them and possibly the business that they're working with to be the most successful in the end. We also just help them all through the way through getting them in front of the board for to present their project for approval and then through the app or the contracting process as well as the repayment process if there's ever any issues through that 20 year period of repayment.
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B
Sure. And how do you know when a community is ready for a project?
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C
So planning is pretty simple. You know, they have ideas of what they're trying to achieve. So those are, you know, don't take too long to build for construction depending on if they have a committed private partner that's really driving the project, that they need the infrastructure to site be retained or expand in the area. Then it's if they have things that they're. If they have to be in a building by a certain time or they want to be sighted here by a certain time. So it figuring out that and working backward and trying to make sure that we can achieve everything that the board requires after they are approved by the board, there's a window we call pre contract conditions where for like construction they have to make sure they have resolution of repayment that they have their, you know, for here it's called sepa, the State Environmental Protection act that they went through that process or an attestment why they don't need to permits are in hand. We also have a thing in our state called the Cultural Resource Reviewer or Executive Order 2102 where I consult with the Department of Archaeology, Historic Preservation and all the interested tribes in the area about the project. We make sure match is secure, we make sure private investment is secured and we have a six month window to do that. And once all that's done, then we go to contract and then they have four years to complete their projects. So it's really just making sure that you know what their timeline is, that they can also achieve all of those matrixes to be able to get to contract in the time timeline that the board allows. Currently post pandemic, our projects complete from on average about 14 months. From the time we go to contract, they're up and operational. Pre pandemic we're about six or seven months. So labor shortages and material shortages and costs have had an impact on that. But we still move pretty, pretty quickly since our goal is to move at the speed of business.
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B
Right. Wow, that is pretty amazing. So was there a project or a community sort of early on that that affected how you think about this?
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C
Yeah, so I think probably my favorite project that I talk a lot about, many reasons because it's a great project for the community. But also they've hit I think almost every program we have available. The Port of Columbia over in Dayton, Washington where Jolly Green Giant piece started, they came to us, they were at 100% capacity and they had a piece of property they were looking at acquiring and they wanted to do some community outreach and get community feedback about if they acquired this land, what they would do with it. So they came to us for planning. Through that planning they heard resoundingly from the community. They wanted to get back to their roots, getting back to that artisan food manufacturing that started with Jolly Green Giant. And so they came back to us for what we call prospective development to acquire the property and build a building. And they built Blue Mountain Station. And it's has a commercial kitchen in it, and then different spaces to be leased out from just a space to work in. And then you can grow and use that commercial kitchen, and then you can grow into a space that has their own commercial kitchen. They do have a small storefront there, so anybody who's there can also sell their goods if they don't want to have their space open to the public. Then a few, about a year and a half later, after that project was complete, they came to us for committed private partner because they had a business that was a weed, Mead, Mead and wine manufacturer. And the city, they were on septic. And the city was like with. With the dredge from the mead. You can't put that into a septic system. You. You need to be on sewer. So they came back to us for a small loan to support that. They eventually built their. A second building. They're onto a third building now, doing some craft milling out there. But just the. The community support and just the fact that they have multiple buildings and they're. It's kind of an incubator space, but it's. Some of them stay in a little bit longer, Some of them move out pretty quickly. They had one business that was Mama Monticelli's candy manufacturer, who started out just in one of the small spaces, using the commercial kitchen so she could sell at food markets. And then she moved into one of those larger spaces. And a couple years later, she moved actually to the town next door and has her own storefront, and it's candy and a bakery and a coffee shop. And so just watching the businesses grow from that tiny space, but also for a community to be true to their. Their history is pretty exciting as well.
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B
So how much of your job is actually funding the projects and how much is helping communities shape the project before the funding happens?
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C
I would say probably 80% of my job is doing project development. I call it like coaching our communities to figure out the right funder. If curb's not the right funder, I also help them through another organization that I'm a part of, the iacc, the Infrastructure Assistance Coordinating Council, which is a nonprofit of state and federal and nonprofit infrastructure funders in the state of Washington. So I have all of those in my hip pocket. If curb's not the right place, I will help them get to yes, somewhere else. But it is a lot of hand holding and guiding to make sure that they're set up for success before they ever even get in front of the board.
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B
What makes a project look promising, maybe on paper at first, but not quite ready?
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C
You know, it's a lot of times surprising. Not surprisingly, it's the business. Our local governments are pretty solid investment, but businesses as we all know, can be really solid today and maybe not so solid tomorrow. We had a project with the Port of Shelton years ago, probably about 10 years ago now, that a company needed their building expanded and some retrofitting done to it. And the business was a third generation company that did military manufacturing, had DoD contracts and came in. It was the grandfather, the father and the son who came and presented to the board. The board overwhelmingly approved the project and about 14 months later our federal administration changed and their DOD contracts after decades were canceled and the business was no longer viable. At that time we were about halfway through the project and support came and was like, what do we do? I'm like, well, you finish the project and then you figure out who else to get in there because we're in it now even though we're not going to, we're not going to stop halfway. That's also part of the job too is when things do go sideways, counseling those communities of what, what their options are and sometimes talking them off the ledge of like, this is not the worst thing. We all take a gamble on businesses. You know, we make our best guess looking in that crystal ball of the future. But recessions happen now. We know pandemics happen. All can have major impacts on those businesses. So the biggest deal is just to kind of set yourself up that this is not the only kind of business that can be there and that you can pivot and market that space to another business.
- [11:54]
B
I think that's probably really important that, you know, there's probably a huge sense of urgency that they feel, the communities feel, you know, especially when things don't go right. But before something happens, how do you balance or help them balance that sense of urgency with, you know, getting, getting everything right, getting the infrastructure right, getting all of everything, everything correct.
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C
I think, you know, I, I tell people 80% of my job is relationship building and I have the benefit of being here so long. So I have long, long term relationships with my communities and being able to, I guess take my experience from other projects and other things that have been successful or maybe not so successful and use that to help them make decisions. But it's really about communication. I honestly believe Curve is as successful as it is because I. Our communities trust us, and so when things do go sideways, we're the first person they call. They don't. They're not like that kid who just kind of hides it, like, until you can't hide it anymore. I've had a community leader call me in tears because things went sideways and they weren't sure what to do and how to go forward because it does feel very dramatic when a committed private partner pulls out or is no longer interested in doing the project. And so I think it's being a counselor, being a safe space for them, having their back, but also not just being the cheerleader, but also sometimes being the voice of reason. I've had projects where I didn't think the business had the best interests of the community at heart and had to have some hard conversations with really small communities were being promised really big things that I just didn't think was viable and had to have, you know, conversations with the mayor of, you're taking on a lot of debt for something that I don't think is going to pan out. And obviously it's their choice and it's board's choice to approve it. But I wouldn't be doing them any favors if I didn't speak my truth to them. And we did actually reduce the project for that project. And unfortunately, the business went sideways in a very big way publicly. And the project is still being built. It's going to be successful. But a lot of hardship along the way as well.
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B
Sure. Now, I imagine you don't stand front and center at the ribbon cuttings and the, you know, the celebrations of the. The new project. How do you explain the importance of all of the less visible work that you do?
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C
Yeah, so I do try to, as much as possible, make sure it's my board, my board leadership at a groundbreaking or ribbon cutting, they're the ones speaking over time. I do think I have become the face of the board because our board leadership changes over time, and I haven't. I think the most important part to me is making sure when my board members come on board, I do a curb member 101 to explain to them who they are and their authority and the importance of the work that we do. I work with our local associations, so we have ports or cities, counties and puds, public utility districts, associations, and make sure that their leadership understands and is communicating the importance of curb and what we do in our process and ultimately the legislature, they're another group of clients I consider, because they're the ones who decide our appropriation biannually that we get access to the funding in our revolving loan account. But they're the ones who, you know, put that into a budget and allow us access to. So working really hard as new legislators come in and understanding the importance in the history of curb, it does help. We have four legislators on our board, so they do help in that messaging, but it is just about just talking to anybody who will listen about the work that we do. We are very unique in the state of Washington, as far as I've researched across the country, in how we process, our process works, the projects that we fund, and how we work with local governments and tribes. The fact we're non competitive, I think is sometimes a hard pill for people to swallow because they're like, how is that fair and equitable? And like, it's quite fair and equitable. Everybody gets a chance, and if their project is ready to go, then they get their chance in front of the board. They don't have to compete and get scored on what's on a piece of paper. And so it's just trying to be transparent as possible in government and talking to anybody who will listen.
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B
So what kinds of infrastructure projects unlock the biggest opportunities for small communities?
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C
Yeah, so the great thing about curb, so a lot of infrastructure funders in Washington have a specific system or a small group of systems that they can fund, and we can fund any system that can be owned and operated by a local government. So above ground and below ground, I would say probably the biggest one for us are buildings. We build a lot of buildings in industrial parks with ports. They're our biggest stakeholder. About 50% or 57% of our historical funding has gone to port, which is weird because we have 79 ports in the state of Washington. For us, they're an economic development district in our state. And so, you know, I would say buildings. We do a lot of, you know, water and sewer, electricity. And then Most recently in 2018, we started doing rural broadband, not specifically for economic development, but community economic development and trying to get all residents and buildings connected in our rural underserved communities at high speed, open access connectivity. When I started doing that, people were like, oh, we need broadband for economic development. And you don't see it connect the same way as you do, like a building or a road or water or sewer. It doesn't have the job creation, but it definitely makes our small communities more competitive. When they're competing with a Tacoma or Spokane or Seattle, we have small towns that now have some viability to have people move back into them because they can, their kids can do homework online, people can work from home. Businesses can have online websites that they can sell their goods on where five, six years ago they didn't have that opportunity.
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B
That's interesting. Would you say that's probably one of the, you know, biggest misunderstandings about that kind of infrastructure upgrade and what it will do for rural community?
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C
Yeah, I. And you know, it's interesting because not everybody kind of sees it the same way. I probably see it this way because I am in the community seeing the outcome from it. And it definitely supports business. But, you know, if you give a business a new road, a new building, upgrade their electricity, upgrade their water access, they can grow and expand leaps and bounds depending on what they're manufacturing. When it comes to Internet, it, it gives them more access to externally than it does in internal productivity. I think it's absolutely needed. I think the pandemic showed that for sure that, you know, we need as much access to every home and business and building across the state of Washington or across the country. But it definitely does not have the same kind of impact or wow factor as other infrastructure does.
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B
Sure. I have a note to ask about the Community Builders Collective. What is that?
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C
Yeah, so weirdly enough, you know, pandemic put us all at home. Prior to the pandemic, I was on the road about six months a year, three to four days a week, driver across the state and did a lot of my work, was done in person and I work in our building every day. And I sat in a space for about six years completely by myself. And it got really lonely. And I started talking to our community members and just realized the struggles they were having, that they felt like they were doing it alone. And we have a lot of new people in our economic development space, in our local governments and communities. And so a lot of people like me who've been, who've been around a long time and I started talking about, well, what if we created a community of practice, an online community of practice where people could connect. We could have work sessions about funding, I could share information that I knew about different things coming up, have a funding calendar across the state for all funding, but also have a place where people can just come and connect and talk about what's working, what's not working, and also a place to just ask questions. And so we kicked that off at the end of last year. We have 181 members. We meet twice a month just for community Hours with no. No real topic other than y' all come in with, like, just a question to ask to get a conversation going. And then we have a private Facebook group that I do kind of a pep talk once a week of whatever I'm thinking about or things I'm hearing about. Has been great just to mostly be a space for new people. You know, this is something we all kind of fall into. And I think if you fall into economic development, there's something calling your soul to do the work. It's hard. As you said, we don't. We don't get a lot of pats on the back for what we're doing. I call us the superheroes of our small communities. And so just to give people a place to feel connected and to feel supported has been really moving for me. But also just a space to also feel like we're not doing it alone.
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B
That's awesome. Yeah. No, I imagine that just having that space means they're not all reinventing the wheel all the time.
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C
Right, right, right. We're keeping people from just, you know, running on that hamster wheel and burning out and not seeing results where, you know, I have spent a lot of my career connecting communities. We have some federal funders that are. That can be hard to get through, but I have some communities are. Who are super successful. So when I hear one community going after, like, EDA funding, I'm like, oh, I have, you know, Jennifer from Port of Woodland who'd be happy to help you and show you the ropes. And so this is a quicker way to do that. Instead of me having multiple phone calls a day, I can, you know, shoot an email out to 180 people or get on a Facebook Live with 180 people and share it much quicker and much more efficiently.
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B
And, you know, that kind of is why I made the podcast. Right. I was lonely and I thought, you know what? There's a lot of people out there that are doing economic development, and they're unique space, and they all have something to share, and everybody can learn something from it.
- [21:58]
C
Absolutely. So, yeah, I think that's what makes economic development special. I had a friend years and years and years ago tell me economic developers are like art. You know them when you see them, and not everybody can do it. So I think. I think it is great to have a space where economic developers can share, share their words of wisdom and gleam wisdom from others.
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B
So you mentioned that we all fall into this. How did you fall into economic development?
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C
I stumbled into it. I actually had been living in New Mexico doing corporate accounting for an international food company. And I moved home. My mom was ill and she had worked at Community Trade and economic development and my aunt was still working there. And I got a phone call one day and she's like hey, there's this job opening for this board. The boss is kind of prickly. But I think that you would do well with her and I think you would love the work. And I was just starting to look for a job so I applied and then I got it. And you know, for a while it was just like it was a job. I was a single mom of a toddler and. But being that our board meet six times per year and communities come to the board and they pitch their projects, you get connected and emotionally, you know, invested in the work that they're doing. And then through time I just realized more and more that the work really does feed my soul. As a, a kid who grew up in poverty and scarcity and under housed a lot of my childhood, that the fact that I can be on the front line with these communities building good high wage jobs, that a single parent can work one job and pay all their bills and their, their kids can go to the movies or do extracurricular sports and be able to feed your dog really is important to me. And it, and it's interesting, the more I talk to people about economic development, they all have, have a story, everyone in my communities have a story of how they end up there. And it really does tug at their soul to do this work.
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B
Yeah, I would agree with that. 100. So if you have, do you have any advice for somebody who's just getting started in economic development?
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C
I would say show up, show up to everything in your community. Listen to your community members, even the ones who are hard, who might be making a ruckus. Most of the time they just feel like they're not being heard. So try to give them a space to be heard even if you can't do what they want you to do do validate their concern. It's something I saw a lot in broadband. Just giving a space for people to speak and find somebody who's been doing it for a while and don't be afraid to ask questions. We live in a state where we love a good acronym. And so if you go to any meeting you're going to hear Alphabet soup everywhere. So like just ask like what does this acronym mean? What does that mean? Because we don't speak real English in state government here, I think find somebody who was willing to let you take along and just, just take the time. Take the time. And one day, you, you, you'll be talking in real life like, wow, I know what I'm talking about. And, and I can be helpful.
- [24:52]
B
We, we all remember that moment when suddenly we have some idea what we're doing. And, yeah, it just, it just sort of sneaks up on you. Well, Janae, this has been awesome. So if anybody wants to reach out to you, you know, they want to pick your brain, they want to learn more about what you do. What is the best way for them
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C
to do that directly? Probably through LinkedIn. And then my email's on my website for, you know, commerce.law.govterb but LinkedIn Janae Stark is probably the easiest and most direct way to get ahold of me.
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B
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
- [25:28]
C
Thank you. Thank you.
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A
You've been listening to the Econ Dev show with Dane Carlson. If you're an economic developer who knows, never stops learning. For more expert strategies, fresh insights and new ideas to take your career, organization and your community to the next level, visit us on the web@econdevshow.com.