Michael Kowski, President & CEO, McKinney Economic Development Corporation

Michael Kowski, president and CEO of the McKinney Economic Development Corporation (MECD), talked to Invest: about its strategies to attract and foster businesses. He highlighted the importance that MECD places on developing relationships to attract and retain businesses, and the multifaceted strategy it follows to bring decision-makers together, promote innovation, and incubate startups.

What have been some of the major successes and highlights for the city of McKinney and your office over the past year?

The Sunset Amphitheater in McKinney is one of the biggest highlights. The MEDC purchased land in McKinney about 20 years ago with the idea of finding the right partner to develop that land. We found a partner in a group called Notes Live, now known as VENU, that is developing a collection of amphitheaters across the country. Those facilities range in size from 5,000 or 6,000 seats to others like ours, which is 20,000 seats and puts us further in the national spotlight. As bands tour and come to McKinney and people want to buy tickets, it gets our brand out there and our name on people’s lips across the nation. 

The Sunset Amphitheater will have a multibillion-dollar economic impact on our region. We are optimistic that we will attract more big projects and that our residents and visitors alike will be served by the regional draws coming to McKinney. When we look at projects, we not only look at the immediate PR pieces, but also at what they mean in the long term for McKinney. In the case of the Sunset Amphitheater, that means our residents will be able to enjoy live music in their backyard for a long time. We also expect that it will inspire the construction of more hotels in McKinney, which will attract more tourism and have a ripple effect.

What are the key advantages that McKinney offers to attract and retain businesses?

McKinney takes relationships seriously, to the point that our operating mission is to build strong relationships. That enables us to not only attract people to look at McKinney as an option, but also to galvanize those partnerships quickly thanks to our trust factor. We care about the people as much as we do about the project itself. 

We are also focusing on creating a startup ecosystem. We have a multipronged approach, where one prong is our Innovation Fund that provides non-diluted capital to startups, the second entails us hosting special events that bring people together, and the third prong is partnering with a Silicon-Valley-based startup accelerator called Plug and Play. That partnership helps us with a vertical called Enterprise AI that leans into AI to help companies make better decisions and manage information in different ways.

Moreover, Frisco also hired Plug and Play with a focus on SportsTech, and Frisco and McKinney partnered to co-fund a FinTech vertical that is yielding great results. We had our first batch of startups go through their program, and some of them are already raising millions of dollars.

What resources does the MEDC provide those businesses?

Texas sells itself. We do a great job of announcing to all business sectors that we are the place where you want to be. People often pick Texas before they even hear about McKinney, so we must work hard to be part of the conversation. We do that in two ways with businesses. On the one hand, we sell the fact that McKinney is only half built out, so there is available land. Those looking to grow a business want to be sure that there are options for growth in the future. We also have open land where people can form their vision of what their campus should look like.

The second piece is the great quality of life that McKinney offers. When decision-makers look at where to put their business and relocate their employees, one of the questions they ask is what families and employees are going to do on weekends and how they will recreate. We are also focused on selling the idea that McKinney can offer you more than just a place to work but also a great place to live and play. We have more CEOs living in McKinney who are interested in moving their businesses here because this is where they want to grow, have their family live, and prosper.

What are some of the unique opportunities to grow and impact the city?

One of our goals is to ensure that people do not need to leave McKinney for anything. Many family entertainment options for young families are outside McKinney, so we are working hard to get more of those options inside our borders. We are looking specifically along the 121 Corridor, where the MEDC owns about 100 acres of land. We are looking at projects that will allow people to do stuff on weekends to create a family entertainment draw on those pieces of land and complement what is going on in downtown McKinney. 

We also have land north of Highway 380 that is in development. That area is largely residential, but the 380 bypass that will be built in 10 to 15 years will open new opportunities for commercial development along that corridor. While some cities across the nation already have their highways established and their main corridors set in stone, our highways are still being built. 

What resources is the MECD providing to support entrepreneurship and to create high-tech jobs?

We started a grant program called the Innovation Fund that we offer to tech startups. We provide $50,000 to help a company grow and ask for zero equity as part of that partnership. In exchange, we ask that they keep their headquarters in McKinney for three years during the life cycle of the grant. We do not know of any other city across the United States that is offering something like that. That fund creates momentum in McKinney, where we are signaling that we want people to start their businesses in McKinney.

We have many options in terms of how we grow businesses. For instance, our funding focuses on growing the businesses inside our city and supporting people to grow ideas into billion-dollar companies. We have funded over 40 businesses and have nearly 30 still active in the program and raising millions of dollars. We recently saw two of our Innovation Funds companies merge into a bigger company because of this local ecosystem where founders run into each other at our events, galvanize those partnerships, and grow bigger.

How is the McKinney Economic Development Corporation leveraging partnerships to promote economic development in the region?

Education and workforce development are important for our team, so our partnerships have focused on state and regional agencies and our schools. Many people are focused on how to help companies find the workforce they need. School districts are important but having an agile workforce that can adjust to the times is equally important. Sometimes partnerships are also about aligning resources to get the word out and make connections between different groups.

What are your outlook and top priorities for McKinney Economic Development Corporation?

That is threefold. On the one hand, we aim to have some projects that McKinney residents can be proud of, such as the amphitheater. On another hand, we aim to provide good quality office space and land for headquarters that want to relocate into McKinney. That includes office buildings surrounded by restaurants that inspire employees to come to work rather than work from home. We aim to create neat spots where people are excited because they work in a cool area.

Third is the innovation side of it all. As the startups grow, we are trying to connect them to corporations. Those corporations have challenges and problems they are trying to solve and often these startups have solutions, so we aim to get both groups to talk to each other so that corporations have a collection of small businesses whose sole purpose is to help them get better.