The Fast Company article describes Salinas' agricultural technology-based economic development strategy, which includes partnerships with the Steinbeck Innovation Cluster and the new Thrive Accelerator:
The 160,000-person city, where the average age is only 28, is partnering with investors, agricultural companies, and universities in an attempt to lure startups and equip its own workforce with new skills. With coding camps, entrepreneurship trainings, and a new startup accelerator, its aim is to cultivate a farming tech cluster, just as many Internet startups exist in San Francisco Bay area and biotech startups in Boston.
Fast Company quotes Mayor Joe Gunter on the strategy's potential, which, he says, came into sharp relief following the exit of Capital One from Salinas:
"We jumped in to say: what should we be doing? How do we get those jobs back?," says Salinas mayor Joe Gunter. "We went through all the strengths of the region and realized that right at our doorstep we had agriculture and technology. That was a big ah-hah moment for us."
City officials and business leaders met in New York last December 4 and 5 with journalists, site selection consultants (who advise large corporations on where to locate operations) and Forbes magazine founder Steve Forbes, along with other Forbes staff.
The City group included Mayor Joe Gunter, City Manager Ray Corpuz, Steinbeck Innovation Cluster Co-Founder John Hartnett and Taylor Farms CEO Bruce Taylor. In addition to Fast Company and Popular Science, the journalists represented the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek and the Financial Times' fDi Intelligence, which covers foreign direct investment.
The Forbes meeting advanced plans for "Forbes Reinventing America: The AgTech Summit," which will be held in Salinas in July, with Steve Forbes among the featured participants. Last July, Forbes magazine, the City, the Steinbeck Innovation Cluster and Thrive Accelerator collaborated on an agtech summit held in Monterey.
The City sees the summit partnership with Forbes as a cost-effective way of reaching a national and international audience of corporate decision-makers, along with other media outlets who will cover July's event.
"One point of comparison we use in calculating the value is what it would cost us if we decided instead to buy advertising in Forbes," said City Manager Ray Corpuz. "The fee for a single full-page ad is more than $155,000."
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