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The Pleasanton City Council recently adopted the updated Economic Development Strategic Plan, which staff say will aim to increase the city’s fiscal strength and help support local businesses.
The strategic plan outlines several key initiatives, priorities and benchmark goals over the course of the 2024-28 fiscal years to help attract more business development interest — which includes approving zoning designation laws to allow life science companies to develop — and ensure the businesses that are already in Pleasanton stay.
“With the changing economic landscape of the past several years, exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic, staff began an update to the city’s existing economic development strategic plan,” city economic development manager Lisa Adamos told the dais. “This update was an opportunity to reevaluate the 2013 strategic plan and develop a contemporary plan to meet the business needs of the city.”
The fact that it has been 10 years since the city last updated the strategic plan was one of the main selling points for Councilmember Valerie Arkin, who said that, “I think this is definitely needed.”
“I think this is a good strategic plan,” Arkin added during the Aug. 15 council meeting. “Overall, it identifies priorities as it relates to economic development and the initiatives and actions that go along with it. I think it’s a really good framework for us to start with.”
According to Adamos, the process to develop the update started in August 2022. She said that staff and the city’s Economic Vitality Committee have been working with financial and economic consulting services to collect data in order to create an economic profile report of the city.
“The economic profile report is an assessment of Pleasanton economic, fiscal and business strengths and opportunities, and includes a review and analysis of citywide demographic and employment patterns, commercial real estate market analysis and sub area industry analysis,” Adamos said.
“The findings from this analysis identified strengths, gaps, opportunities and recommendations to advance the city’s economic development goals over the next five years,” she added.
Along with interviewing staff, business representatives and community stakeholders, Adamos said that staff also reviewed results from the recent “2022 Business Climate Survey” when drafting the strategic plan update.
“The purpose of this plan is to offer a baseline assessment across different industries and development opportunities that exist for Pleasanton, considering the existing activities that are happening as well as Pleasanton’s position within the region,” economic development expert Jade Shipman told the council.
Shipman, who was representing Willdan, the financial consulting firm based in Oakland that the city hired to help with the update, provided a detailed breakdown of the implementation plan priorities that the city identified as key targets to address.
The first mainly had to do with establishing a strong economic development division within the city. That means setting performance goals and benchmarks; facilitating ongoing infrastructure improvements necessary to support city wide economic development; incorporating diversity, equity and inclusion best practices; formalizing community and business partnerships; and creating an annual economic development report.
Some of the other key initiatives had to do with business retention, expansion and attraction; local revenue growth in regards to expanding citywide retail and tenant support and also increasing tourism; and entrepreneurship and innovation outreach.
Shipman said the latter was mainly about strengthening regional partnerships and existing programs that will allow the entrepreneurship culture to continue in Pleasanton.
While unmet entertainment needs and competing retail offerings in the surrounding communities were some points of concern, Shipman said some of the main areas that require attention are in housing affordability, underutilized parcels and an unfulfilled demand for life science company spaces.
“Those life sciences companies want campus settings and they want a co-located mix of land uses, which currently looks like: some amount of office, some amount of research and development, some amount of lab, and then a limited amount of manufacturing and distribution,” Shipman said. “Right now, Pleasanton does not have a zoning designation that would allow for that.”
She added that she has repeatedly heard the need for zoning designations that would cut down on lengthy approval processes.
“That means if you don’t have that zoning designation, it has to go through a much more lengthy approval process and the outcome of that approval process is less certain,” she said. “So a business or a developer is less likely to want to engage in that process and they’re more likely to want to choose a community where they know for sure that if they buy a piece of land, or they put in all this work, that it’s going to lead to them getting something out of the ground.”
While the entire dais was supportive of the final draft adoption, each one had certain issues surrounding the overall plan.
Councilmember Julie Testa was mainly concerned with the state’s current housing requirements through the city’s Housing Element and how that pressure to rezone for residential housing is troubling some business owners.
“There was a lot of concern from the businesses. They’re saying, ‘Hey, we’re viable businesses and if you start putting housing right here, this is really going to be a conflict,'” Testa said.
She said that she has been hearing other cities complain about having to rezone retail spaces for residential and that she just wanted the city to keep that in mind.
However, Shipman said that with the city’s General Plan discussions coming up, those are when the city can really look at and categorizing underutilized parcels that might be tucked away in places like the Hacienda Business Park and the Stoneridge Shopping Center in order to expand the city’s options when it comes to any kind of development.
“There’s a lot of land there that actually, I think, could be utilized for different purposes,” Shipman said. “Some of that could include housing, some of that could include potentially life sciences, but I think there would need to be a balance. I think those conversations are difficult in any community.”
Councilmember Jeff Nibert’s concerns centered on the feasibility of actually implementing the plan and ensuring its success.
Shipman told him that the city’s Economic Development Division would be responsible for implementing the plan along with any other necessary city departments, but that there are some aspects of the plan update which highlight the need for two additional roles within the division.
“I think there’s one in year three and one in year five,” she said. “I will note, your current Economic Development Division is fairly lean for a city of your size.”
Adamos added to that by saying that the division is already completing some of the initiatives and tasks but that some of the newer ones outlined in the plan won’t start getting addressed until the second or third year into the new strategic plan.
“All of our strategic plans are being knit into our Citywide Strategic Plan,” City Manager Gerry Beaudin said. “So if there’s specific topic areas, we are looking for ways to make sure that the goals and objectives that are set out in these individual department or division strategic plans are rolled up and the actions are completed.”
Arkin asked about helping with workforce housing and clarified with Beaudin that the goal is to increase workforce housing opportunities by the amount of affordable units the city has zoned for in the recently adopted Housing Element.
Arkin also said that ideally that would reduce commuters and would go toward addressing goals in the Climate Action Plan 2.0.
Vice Mayor Jack Balch also called out several aspects of the updated plan.
One thing he pointed out from the report was that 17% of the city’s total number of residents live and work within Pleasanton. The report also stated that Pleasanton has 61,000 inbound workers and 32,000 outbound workers.
He said that is an important aspect of the conversation given that in the city’s Climate Action Plan 2.0, it outlines goals to reduce emissions by reducing the number of people driving to work by having more jobs available in Pleasanton so that people could take public transit, bike or walk to work.
He also said that the city needs to keep in mind that other cities are competing for retail spaces and that they have to make sure that the plan is not shelved, that the city looks at speeding up the building and planning application processes, and that Pleasanton works on attracting innovative businesses.
“I’ll just say when our tone is ‘no, no, no’ to the state and local control — when you’re trying to find workers at a reasonable price and have a cost of living that they can enjoy and be a part of the community — that tone and tenor, I don’t think, is good for attracting business,” Balch said.
Mayor Karla Brown rounded off the conversation with one main request: look at strengthening the relationship between the city and the Fortune 500 companies that are already based in Pleasanton.
She said she wants staff to really develop those relationships with companies like 10x Genomics, Workday, Thermo Fisher Scientific and other similar big companies so that they continue to stay and possibly expand within the city.
I have to say, I watched this presentation, and Ms. Shipman is one consultant who is clearly worth her salt. She held her ground and pushed back against CM Testa’s standard anti-housing tropes. She also made it clear that Pleasanton is falling behind in competitiveness because of its lack of housing for workers. Moreover, she emphasized, multiple times, that one of Pleasanton’s struggles in this arena is due to the City’s grossly understaffed Economic Development Department. I believe she mentioned that Pleasanton has something like 25% of the staff in that department compared to other cities of similar size. If that’s the case, is it any wonder why there are so many vacant retail and commercial spaces around town? Ms. Shipman is worth every penny. Good investment, and kudos to whoever on the City staff established that relationship.