FORWARD THINKING A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION WITH THREE INFLUENTIAL LEADERS IN OUR COMMUNITY PH OTO G RA P HY B Y BET H MA NN
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n celebrating Durham’s sesquicentennial, there’s a lot of interesting history to reflect upon. But, as a city that’s always moving to that next step, we’ve got to plan ahead. Durham Magazine COO Rory Gillis and Executive Editor Amanda MacLaren invited Mayor Steve Schewel, Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce President Geoff Durham and Downtown Durham Inc. President/CEO Nicole Thompson to Counting House at 21c Museum Hotel to discuss where we’re at as a city, and where we go from here.
Responses have been edited for clarity. DM Durham has been known as the City of Medicine. When the Rice Diet was a big thing, we were a city of diets. Now we are adding more tech and commerce jobs. It seems like that’s our next wave. How many tech jobs exist in Durham today and what does that number look like tomorrow? GEOFF What company in Durham isn’t in IT in some form or
another, right? If you look at our four major industry clusters, yes, IT is one of those, as is life science and bio-med, as is advanced manufacturing as well as clean tech. But there is an IT in all of those. So it’s really hard to specifically pare down a number because there’s a lot of cross-pollination there. Roughly I’d say about 15 to 20% of our companies would identify to be predominantly in the IT sector. DM At what rate do you think that’s climbing? How fast do you think tech is growing? NICOLE Well, we’re No. 4 region-wide in life sciences and bio,
according to Jones Lang LaSalle. There are quite a bit of tech, biotech and life science companies coming downtown, and our focus is to make sure that we still have the space available for them. DM What other industries is Durham trying to attract? GEOFF Continuing to grow our clean tech sector is a big deal. I think
continuing to build upon some of the success stories you’ve started to see in ag bio.
NICOLE Though it’s not a sector per se, Durham does have this special
little niche for entrepreneurs of all types. We quickly go to WeWork and American Underground, but let’s not forget that we’ve got a lot of space in and around Durham that is focused on artists, graphic artists 72
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and the art community. There’s The Mothership, which is located in downtown, that’s very supportive of the art community, and we have a number of spaces for artists. Durham is a place where you can come and experience and experiment and fail, and that’s not such a bad thing. You learn from that and you pick yourself up, and there are communities that are around to support you. GEOFF That entrepreneurship applies to our restaurateurs, our
brewers, our distillers. That creative culture that resides here. I think it’s shown through all the different types of sectors, in large companies and small companies. DM Going back to tech, IT, life sciences for a second, what makes Durham competitive in those areas? What makes people want to bring their companies here? GEOFF Don’t just think about it in terms of Durham, think of it
regionally. Three Tier-1 research institutions, [we have] a worldclass HBCU in N.C. Central. The 10 additional colleges and universities in total combine to produce 42,000 graduates each year. NICOLE A really robust technical community through Durham Tech
and Wake Tech. There is that ability to either move yourself up or come in and get an associate degree or get training. And there’s a really robust workforce talent here. DM Jumping off of that, there’s so much conversation, it seems to us from the outside, between industry and schools – Duke Energy is
trying to get programs for line workers and things like that; even our Durham Public Schools (DPS) that are trying to train students. How is DPS supporting all of these initiatives and workforce readiness? GEOFF I think it’s absolutely critical to make sure there is an alignment
between the business community and Durham’s education system. We have to ... define clear career pathways to make sure that the variety of opportunities that we are providing for the high school graduate, for the technical school graduate, for the advanced degree graduate – they understand what level of commitment needs to be there. They have to understand that those jobs are sitting there waiting for them.
STEVE Think about the City of Medicine Academy, which is a fabulous
high school. You do have that kind of alignment with our health professions, but it’s really much bigger than that. There’s a whole lot of