Gloria Salinas, Vice President, Frisco Economic Development Corporation
Gloria Salinas, vice president of the Frisco Economic Development Corporation (EDC), talked to Invest: about the region’s population growth and how that is being handled. Right now, there is a focus on attracting more jobs to decrease the 86% of residents who leave the city for work.
What makes Frisco EDC so successful at attracting new businesses to the area?
It starts with talent. Companies continue to search for top talent and a future-ready workforce . Frisco is well positioned with our talent base. We have two times the national average of tech talent, and we have been the fastest-growing city for the past 10 years and our population boom and talent attraction hasn’t slowed. Companies are looking for cities that are experiencing a population increase because it signals a strong talent pipeline into the future as they scale. Also, more than 67% of our residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, so our workforce is highly educated. Every one of the companies we talk to says they chose Frisco for its growing tech talent. We are completely well positioned with a nice talent pipeline, which is healthy for corporate and tech growth.
Given recent economic issues, how do you expect the EDC to navigate the landscape?
For us, the rising cost of construction has impacted real estate development delays. Based on each project, we can lean on our incentive tool kit for qualified infrastructure where we can support commercial construction projects with surrounding infrastructure like water, sewer, roads and sidewalks to help alleviate some of that cost to the developer. We offer job-based incentives to the companies themselves. Those offset some of the relocation costs. It is our role and responsibility to make it easy to do business in Frisco as well as support the success of our business community. We are with them through the full life cycle. We meet and check in with them on a regular basis and support the company through their next steps to ensure a soft landing in Frisco. We then continue our conversations and provide services after the sale.
Universal will build a new theme park here. What impact will that project have on the region?
The park is going to sit on about 100 acres where we are starting to see a lot of the development take place. Universal will sit across the tollway from PGA Frisco. The economic impact we have estimated for the region is significant in terms of tourism revenue. Universal will bring hundreds of millions of dollars in economic investment and create more than 1,000 jobs, including full-time, part-time and seasonal jobs. It takes Frisco from a day-trip city to an overnight city. Universal and PGA make Frisco an entertainment destination. One great thing about the project is innovation. This Universal concept has never been done before. This is the first time they’ll have a theme park outside of California and Florida. The research and development for Universal to do a micro theme park for a younger subset of their audience is an excellent example of Frisco’s forward-thinking public-private partnerships. The economic impact is going to be phenomenal as well as the research and development aspect of it. We are very excited.
How would you describe the region’s educational and economic capability to meet workforce demands and how are you keeping North Texas graduates in the area?
We are working on launching a full talent attraction campaign that will have toolkits and resources for human resources professionals and recruiters in Frisco. They can showcase why you should consider taking the job offer in Frisco or relocating here. We have launched a talent task force with local partners, including the Workforce Development Commission to support our businesses in filling positions, as well as a support system to create a bespoke curriculum for them. We want to provide our companies with resources and toolkits so that they know where to find their next talent.
What are some initiatives or projects that you are excited to push forward?
I am excited that we have launched a fantastic marketing campaign and that we have a proactive strategy to recruit specific types of businesses. As of a 2019 labor study, we lose about 86% of our working population every day to jobs outside of our city, so that means our job opportunities have not kept up with the population boom. We have not been able to create jobs as fast as the community needs us to. There are 81,046 working residents in Frisco who are commuting outside of Frisco to work, and 13,583 Frisco residents who live and work in Frisco. There is so much congestion going south on the tollway in the morning. We can fix that by creating these jobs and capturing our intellectual capital in our city. We have our workforce ecosystem and launched a proactive attraction strategy to bring more headquarters and jobs to the city; our goal is to increase those opportunities. We saw an increase in Frisco’s sales tax revenue while people were home during COVID. We know talent shed has real repercussions on loss of sales tax revenues and commercial property tax to the city. I am most excited about being more proactive and aggressive to tell our story. We will attract more companies and create more job opportunities. We have all the makings to do so, it is just the matter of getting out there and recruiting those companies. I am very excited to do that.
