The Sink in Boulder is Boulder’s oldest restaurant. (Cliff Grasmick — Staff Photographer)
Boulder’s economy faces significant but familiar challenges, including labor shortages, inflation, workforce training, a lack of affordable housing, and high office space vacancies.
However, the city also enjoys a diverse economic base, with a promising industry in particular, life sciences.
That was the message Thursday at the Boulder Economic Summit, presented by the Boulder Economic Council and the Boulder Chamber of Commerce on the campus of the University of Atmospheric Research on Center Green Drive.
The program’s theme, “Our Evolving Economy,” serves as an umbrella for a variety of presentations, from a gala at The Think restaurant on The Hill to panels with Nobel laureates and representatives from other industries. I accomplished it.
Chris Heinritz, co-owner of The Sink, sat down with John Vahlenkamp, senior editor at Prairie Mountain Media. The Think is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
After explaining the restaurant’s history and showing a video about the iconic eatery, Heinritz discussed the challenges The Think faces, including attracting employees.
“Our biggest challenge is attracting a workforce, and that includes affordable housing,” Heinritz said, noting the restaurant has no employees who live in Boulder. did.
But he expressed optimism that two new hotels and a conference center will be built on The Hill and one on the University of Colorado Boulder campus.
“It’s really going to change the way this hill operates,” he said, noting that these projects will bring “a new face” to businesses in the area.
“We need to revitalize The Hill and I hope this is a big step forward for us,” he said.
strength of science
Boulder’s strengths in science were highlighted in remarks by President Antonio Busalacchi about UCAR’s history of the organization’s presence in Boulder and its impact on local science and economy.
UCAR is a consortium of 126 universities and research universities that manages the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Atmospheric Research. UCAR has 1,450 employees and a five-year budget of $938 million, focused on weather, water, climate and air quality research and training the next generation of researchers.
Busalacchi described the vision of NCAR’s first director, Walter Orr Roberts, who was instrumental in establishing the center in Boulder, and aimed to “solidify Boulder as a science city.”
Mr. Roberts also helped attract other federal laboratories to Boulder.
“He wanted to create a community that fostered scientific relationships,” Busalacchi said.
CU feeds the life sciences sector
Scientific strengths extend to the University of Colorado Boulder, which has helped foster scientific progress and economic growth in the life sciences fields.
Tom Chek, a distinguished professor of biochemistry at the University of California and a 1989 Nobel Prize winner, said in his keynote address that the University’s discoveries had been on the market for a long time.
Professor Cech described CU as a “catalyst for biotechnology” and said the university stands at the crossroads of commerce and research.
“We don’t ignore the fact that commercializing discoveries can impact the world,” he says.
Cech referenced the work of CU’s Larry Gold, Leslie Reinwand and Marvin Carruthers. They each helped launch multibillion-dollar companies.
Gold has launched a number of companies, including SomaLogic Corp., which went public in 2021 and recently announced a merger with Standard Biotools.
Mr. Reinwand co-founded MyoKardia Inc., a biomedical company that develops small molecule therapeutics to address the clinical needs of patients with inherited heart diseases. The company was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb in 2020 for more than $13 billion.
Mr. Carruthers, founder of companies such as Amgen and Applied Biosystems, recently won the inaugural Richard N. Merkin Award in Biomedical Technology.
Cech’s work with RNA pioneered the mRNA vaccines most commonly used to vaccinate against COVID-19. While traditional vaccines introduce a harmless virus into the body and trigger an immune response, messenger RNA vaccines do not contain the actual virus but still trigger an immune response.
He pointed out that mRNA vaccines are not medicines or drugs.
“When you talk about it that way, it tends to scare people. It tends to make people suspicious,” Cech said, adding that mRNA is naturally present in humans and is “in everything we eat. He pointed out that it exists in food.
Asked about the Boulder region’s standing compared to other centers of biotech activity, Cech said the region will never rival the industry’s largest centers.
“I don’t think Colorado’s Front Range has the same density or number of businesses as the two largest cities in the Bay Area, South San Francisco and the Cambridge/Boston area,” he said. “I don’t think we have a chance of catching them.”
He said the reason for this is that the longevity of emerging biotech companies is unknown.
“Failure does happen,” he said, and employees want to know that if their employer fails, “they can just walk across the street and go to another company.”
He said that while the Front Range doesn’t rival the Boston or San Francisco areas, “we’re in the right group below” with markets like San Francisco.
Report on “Our Economy”
Jessica Erickson, director of business development for Sun Construction and Facility Services in Longmont, moderated the panel discussion, which brought together a variety of voices on the economy.
The panel also included Chris Houston, director of practicum at Front Range Community College; Bhavna Chhabra, Google’s Boulder site leader. Trent Hein, co-CEO of Rule 4 LLC, Becky Gamble, CEO of Dean Curran & Company. He is Steve Ouellette, president of ROI Alliance, a management consulting firm.
Mr. Gamble said that, as Mr. Chek pointed out, the growth of the life sciences industry is beginning to penetrate the commercial real estate sector, with offices and other types of real estate being converted to life sciences.
Citing its largest portfolio, BioMed Realty’s purchase of 1 million square feet in Flatiron Park for $625 million, Gamble said: “We’ve seen companies come in and make very large capital investments.” A historic deal in Colorado.
BioMed is converting some of its space to life sciences, and other companies are also building space across the Boulder Valley targeting this area.
“They look to Boulder because of the university, because of the talent that is here, and because of the lifestyle that is here,” Gamble said.
She said she has not yet seen a “significant impact” from corporate move-ins because the existing lab space is not yet completed. That is now changing. ”
Gamble said hundreds of thousands of square feet of laboratory space is under development.
“And most of that is going to be online by the end of this year and into next year. And at that point, we’re going to have a lot of companies that have never been here before coming to Boulder, and we’re going to have a lot more startups coming to Boulder.” I think it will.”
But Gamble noted that office space in general continues to suffer from challenges posed by remote work, with about 30% of downtown Boulder office space vacant.
bring employees back to the office
Chhabra noted that Google employs about 1,800 people locally at its Boulder campus, with “many more employees” working remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, she said the company is trying to bring employees back to the office to encourage creativity and productivity.
“Before the pandemic, Google was an office-first, co-located, close-knit team company,” she said.
That quickly changed due to the coronavirus, with companies transitioning to remote work. But as the pandemic eases and hybrid work emerges, requiring team members to work in the office two or three days a week as a way to increase creativity and productivity, the system needs to change. she said.
“Google has vowed to do everything possible to bring people into the office because we believe that’s how innovation happens,” she said.
Employee challenges
Hein said the biggest challenge for his company, which specializes in cybersecurity and automation, is recruiting employees.
“On the one hand, from a business perspective, this market is great,” Hayne says. “Today we are not limited by sales. In fact, we are limited by recruitment, but how fast can we hire?”
This is because the profitability of cyber-attacks continues to rise and the demand for Rule 4 services is increasing.
Houston said Front Range Community College and other community colleges play an important role in closing the skills gap by training students for specific industries.
Community colleges serve as a pipeline into the workforce, but it can be difficult to predict what skills will be in demand in the future, she said.
“There are jobs we don’t know about yet,” she says. “If someone had told us about AI or ChatGPT five years ago, we would have had questions about it.
“That is why we are working diligently to meet workforce needs by building strong working relationships with our industry partners. , but one of the biggest needs in Colorado is that skills gap.”
The promise and dangers of AI
Ouellette said his company helps companies determine the best metrics for success, including working with artificial intelligence. He said business leaders who are excited about AI need to first understand the different types of AI that exist, including the programs involved in machine learning and the data and algorithms that enable machines to learn. Ta. Large language models such as ChatGPT. There are also vision systems that use technology such as cameras to detect defects in manufactured products and recommend improvements.
Users of AI should use data to test hypotheses and focus on solving specific problems, he said.
Business owners also need to decide what metrics they want to look at to measure success, he said.
“If you don’t do the right measurements and you incorporate it into AI in the future, the AI won’t know what’s going on and will find all kinds of information that isn’t useful,” he says. I did. .
This article was first published by BizWest, an independent news organization, and is published under license agreement. © 2023 BizWest Media LLC.
