Life Along the Streetcar with Tom Heath from The Heath Team Nova Home Loans

On this week’s episode, we’re going to speak with Carrie Kelly. She’s the Executive Director for the Arizona Association of Economic Development, it’s a statewide organization advocating for responsible economic development since 1974. They were recently in Tucson at a convention and took a tour of downtown. We’re going to get all of the details here in just a few minutes.

Today is June 5th, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to “Life Along the Streetcar”.

Each and every Sunday our focus is on Social, Cultural and Economic impacts in Tucson’s Urban Core and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A Mountain to the U of A and all stops in between. You get the inside track- right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on DowntownRadio.org- we’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio app. Reach us by email [email protected] — interact with us on Facebook at LifeAlongTheStreetcar and follow us on Twitter @StreetcarLife

Our intro music is by Ryanhood and we exit with music from The Stripe, “Economics.”

Transcript

Good morning. It’s a beautiful sunny in the old Pueblo. You’re listening to KT DT Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on on your downtown Tucson community sponsored rock and roll radio station.

On this week’s episode, we’re going to speak with Carrie Kelly. She’s the Executive Director for the Arizona Association of Economic Development, it’s a statewide organization advocating for responsible economic development since 1974. They were recently in Tucson at a convention and took a tour of downtown. We’re going to get all of the details here in just a few minutes.

Today is June 5, 2022. My name is Tom Heath, and you’re listening to Life Along the Streetcar each and every Sunday. Our focus is on social, cultural and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core, and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From a mountain to you, Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on a 9.1 FM and available for streaming on Downtownradio.org.

Also available on your iPhone or Android with our very own Downtown Radio Tucson app. You can also listen on, tune in and all kinds of ways to find us on our great shows here in downtown radio. If you want to get us on the show itself, have some input for us. You can email us, [email protected] that same URL has all of our past episodes. We’re just about any place you’re going to find podcasts. And of course, we love the social media with Instagram and Facebook. Hit us up, share and tell us what you like us to be talking about. Well, this June is happening pretty fast here. Sort of the first half of the year just sort of disappeared. We’re in the summer months, and if you’re looking for something to do that’s kind of indoorsy and cool, both cool and crazy and also cool in temperature, you might want to check out the Tucson Museum of Art. They’ve got their second Sundays, S-U-N-D-A-Z-E. Sunday is pretty cute where they offer free admission from two to 05:00 P.m. On every second

Sunday in the month. So the next month is coming up a week from today on the 13th. You can head over to the Presidio Block there in the Tucson Museum of Art from two to five and make it a day in the air conditioning and check out some cool art. If you like the heat, then maybe stop next door, go down the block a little bit there and stop at the Presidio Museum and pick up a copy of the turquoise trail map and take a little bit of an adventure on the outdoors as well. Our guest today is a statewide representative. We have a lot of local focus, but today we’re reaching out to Kerry Kelly. She’s the executive director for the Arizona Association of Economic Development. We met through the conference they were doing here in Tucson back in April. Wanting to get her on the show to get a little bit of perspective from just in general economic development picture and also what her conference thought of downtown Tucson because they took a tour. How are we doing in Tucson in the urban core as far

as economic development? So I sat down with her, recorded the interview about a week and a half ago. And this is Kerry Kelly from the Arizona Association of Economic Development. So we’ve got with us today Carrie Kelly. She’s the executive director of an organization, the Arizona Association for Economic Development. So, Kerry, first of all, that’s a lot of big words. Can you tell us a little bit about what the association does? Well, usually the first question I get is what is economic development? What is it that you do for a living? And it’s so hard sometimes to put into words because it involves so many different things. But the organization Aid, as we like to refer to it, much shorter name has been around for almost 50 years now. It was started by local business members who are still a lot of them in our community and our members of our organization still. And it started out as really being the business attraction arm for Arizona. So they saw a big need to entice businesses to come

and locate in Arizona and worked with the communities to plant a lot of the companies that we have today. Intel is a big one that they always like to talk about when they get together. They were one of the first to bring intel in and plant them here. And then, of course, in the last year, we’ve seen the explosion of intel and how important they are some company to Arizona and to the entire region really. So that was really the first purpose of it. And then a sort of economic development has gotten more sophisticated and more players involved. We’ve really become the association where everybody plays nice. So we’ve got the Arizona Commerce Authority and they do a lot of business attraction work with our workforce partners, a lot of that type of work for the entire state. And then we also have Deepak we’ve got Sun Corridor down there. Yuma. We’ve got a lot of great regional economic development organizations that are working in their specific regions to bring people together, to bring businesses

there and also to harness businesses that are there to do expansion and retention efforts. As we’ve sort of grown as a community, economic development has also grown. So we’re encompassing a lot more things than we used to. Workforce development was never really a part of our conversation, and now it’s an important part of what we do in the conversation that we have. And also like housing, as well as something that’s been brought into the conversation. So economic development is really changing and we have a lot of great partners in all of our communities. But like, you know, Tucson is often competing with Phoenix or Sarita, like he’s competing with Oral Valley or something like that. So our organization is really the place that everybody comes together. We give information, we allow people to collaborate. It’s that place where everybody plays nice, and that’s kind of a nice place to be. What I think we have three major pillars and that’s educate, advocate, and collaborate. And we’ve really

worked over the last two years to build up that advocacy part of what we do. And that’s been a fun journey for me. I came from a public policy and economic development background. So building that up to get good, great economic development policy for the state has been really important for us and moving us forward. And it’s a landed a lot of really big deals in the last two years. A lot of the semiconductors came on when we sort of passed legislation that provided them types of incentives to locate here. So it’s a great organization and a lot of really great people that are members of the organization. And I noticed on your website it uses the phrase an advocate for responsible economic development. Tell me about responsible. What does that mean? So it really is responding to the needs of the community because so much of what we do in economic development is harnessing these conversations with the community. Where do you want businesses to locate? Where do you want your planning and zoning

to be? Where do you want housing to be located? All these kinds of conversations make for a better quality of life, a better community. And that’s really what we’re talking about when we talk about responsible, and we also then want to be really responsible to the natural resources that we have, creating sustainable, lasting growth or not growth if communities don’t want that, but it’s been a progress towards a better quality of life for the community members. I’m looking at this, and with those pillars of educate, advocate, and collaborate, it seems like this education is not just for economic drivers, it’s for elected officials or members of the community or nonprofits helping people understand maybe what that sense of responsibility is. Absolutely. We run a lot of them. We do have an easy Ed pro. So that’s an economic development certification that we run. People who are economic developers go through that program, people that are elected officials, and then we also just have students

or people, community members that want to go through that. We have sort of a partner organization in the national and international level, the International Economic Development Council, and we run a basic economic development course with them. So once a year in January, we all get together for a few days and do a really sort of blown up, intense economic development training. And that’s really open to everybody as well. I think probably the most important thing that we do is not only educate our economic developers, but educate everybody about what economic development is. And really honestly, it looks different in every community. And sort of understanding that and understanding the important parts of economic development in your community and how where you want to place resources and efforts towards a better quality of life is the most important thing. And how long have you been with the organization? So I started in April of 2020. What a great time to get into economic development in

Arizona. Yeah. So I came from working at downtown Santa Barbara and a wonderful community there. And we had friends that were in the Tucson area. So we moved back in April 2020 to be closer to them. And it was a really interesting time because they were talking about closing borders and all this kind of stuff. And so we just really packed up quickly and moved on. But this is such a cool opportunity for me because I have an economic development background from a rural community in Indiana and then Santa Barbara. But I also did a lot of nonprofit consulting and especially strategic planning and economic development planning. So this is where the best combination of all of my previous experience into one job. And it was almost better to start at the Pandemic because everybody was ready to throw everything up and just start fresh. So we did our first strategic plan. We sort of like reinventing events and what we were doing and how do we better engage and how do we get different members and

new members and retain our old ones? Everything was on the table. So it was such a cool time and just being able to meet everybody virtually and get around the state and a lot less time it would have taken if I was on the road driving and meeting people in person. You’re talking about the perfect combination of things. And I’m looking at your bio, and of course, it’s a Masters of public administration. However, you also have a BA in art history. So there’s hope out there because I think a lot of people sometimes wonder, what do you do with art history? And you’re like, what else do you get into economic development? Well, I hope that’s the path for everybody. No, it’s funny. I think in rural communities, it’s a muscle that you get to flex a lot. There’s a lot of understanding that tourism, especially in Arizona, like tourism, public arts administration, small communities, like it goes hand in hand. And I know I mean, you guys in Tucson has got it made, too, with all of the arts opportunities

that you have down there. So I think you guys have a great understanding of how that plays into economic development. And just recently I’ve been working with the Arizona Citizens for the Arts to do the reauthorization of the arts Commission. It’s sort of a personal quest, very important for me. It is the fourth largest industry in Arizona. I don’t think a lot of people know that and it brings in like billions of dollars to the state. So anything that we can more effort and money that we can put towards the arts in Arizona, like we’re just going to get back to and sold. Be right back to the second half of our interview with Kerry Kelly and talk about her impressions of Tucson and how we’re doing things in our area of the state. But I first want to remind you that you’re listening to Life Along the Streetcar on Downtown Radio 99.1 FM and available for streaming on Downtown radio.org. This podcast is sponsored by the Mortgage Guidance Group and Noble Home Loans. If you enjoyed this podcast,

keep listening or head over to Lifelongwithstreetcar.org for all of our past episodes, current events and things to do while visiting Tucson. Tom Heath and the MLS number 182420, Nova and a MLS number 3087 BK number 090-2429, Equal Housing Opportunity

welcome back. We’re in the middle of our interview with Kerry Kelly, the executive director for the Arizona Association of Economic Development. We met as she was preparing for their big state conference, which was held here in Tucson. And as part of that, they took a tour along the Streetcar, had some updates from our developers. I got to present a little bit from the history of this show and some of the stories we were able to put together and share. So in this part of the interview, we’re going to find out what she thought of Tucson and how we are doing in Arizona as far as economic development. Well, let’s talk a little about Tucson because this show specifically has a footprint of University of Arizona to a mountain, which is pretty much our urban core. And you and I electronically met through the conference you had recently and many of your members took a tour of that area. Did you get any feedback on how Tucson is doing? I think everybody absolutely loved the tour. I think it was

probably people’s favorite part of the conference that we just had. So every spring we have an economic development conference. We have one in the fall as well. It’s usually geared more towards practitioners and elected officials. The spring one is really for everybody who loves economic development to come and talk and learn and grow. So we did do a mobile tour of downtown Tucson during that event. And we went everywhere from your bar places, your businesses, just looking at, I think the streetcar, like just examining everything in Tucson and everybody just loved it. And it’s so beneficial to have those conferences in the communities because I think a lot of people stayed the weekend and then we’re back down to visit as well. And the great thing is next April in 2023, we will be back in Tucson. So we’re excited to come back down there and explore the city even more. Fantastic. And I was a little shout out here locally. Our director of economic initiatives with the city. Barbara Coffee.

She’s within the last few years into the Tucson area, but she’s getting a lot of recognition. She won you’re one of the economic developer of the Year works that she put out. She did. And on her staff, Amanda Bruno, project manager, won the member of the year as well. Well, I know Amanda. I don’t know if she’s been on our show, but she’s done a lot of work in the downtown area and really helping to collaborate with a lot of the businesses. So we’ll get her on the show down the road. Tucson has such a talented economic development staff, and I think I’ve known Barbara for a number of years, even before I came to this position. And I know her when she was up in Las Vegas, in Henderson, and she’s just like a force to be reckoned with in such a good way. And I think what she’s done and what she’s brought on to the community has been so beneficial. And all the work she’s done in the downtown and connecting the dots and especially through Covet, the city has stepped up in amazing ways, and there’s

a lot to be proud of there. Yeah. And I didn’t know this until I was researching for the show, but she also was named as one of the top 50 economic developers across the country by an organization. Yeah. Consultant Connect. I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah. Her and Kelly Patton were the top 50 this year with APS, so we were well represented. It was an amazing honor. We have a lot of conversations in Tucson, and I would imagine it’s the same maybe different conversations, but there’s still this tug of war between developing too much and making things unaffordable but not developing enough. And you’ve got blight I mean, Where’s the magic bullet in that? Have you figured that out yet? Have you written that book soon to be published? No. I came from work here in downtown Santa Barbara, and we experienced a lot of the same things. I think we had sort of heightened homelessness at that point that affected the downtown and a lot of our vacancy rates. There were a lot of talks of doing, like

vacancy taxes, redevelopment areas, things like that. And I would think California has a lot more tools in their toolbox than Arizona in terms of redevelopment areas, TIFF districts like things like that. So we really sort of have to be looking at policy issues or sort of like eminent domains or things like that that might give the city access to get those properties back and then do redevelopment. I wish there was. And I think that we just did a State of Arizona economic development survey. And one of the main things that especially our private side developers and construction industry people were really concerned about was sort of the NIMBYism, but also sort of like the antidevelopment because house prices are rising. And then what does bringing an industry due to rising house prices. And we have such a sort of supply issue of housing that has really caused a lot of spike in housing prices. And how do we then combat that as economic developers? And I think we’re sort of in that Gray period

where we’re all trying to figure out what that magic bullet is. It’s going to get us back on track. But we still have a huge amount of development that’s coming in, good high paying jobs that are coming into the area. And I think housing supply will catch up. And there are things that are working on at the state House and looking to other communities that they’re doing in terms of housing that I think will really be beneficial. Is there someone out there that’s doing it? Well, that is a good model that we could look at. I would say on a smaller scale. The city of Sedona and Cottonwood has sort of paired up together and hired one person to develop housing from the city perspective to work on housing issues. So that sort of like cost sharing and sharing of community resources. I don’t think we’ve really seen in Arizona before, but it’s such an interesting and cool model. What would happen if Tucson would join forces with Phoenix and really both trying to solve the housing issue, or can there

be some joint resources that we all sort of rely on? We’re all having the same issues across the state. So how can we sort of best work on policy but also administratively figure these things out as we go? Yeah, I know 20 years ago we were having issues with infrastructure and how it was sort of broken out from community to community. Community. We came up in this part of the state with the regional Transportation Authority. That was a regional look at that. Maybe we need like a regional housing authority. I know it’s not a perfect model, but it certainly has accomplished a lot of what the goals were 20 years ago. Economic development is not a team sport. It’s what everybody will say, that collaboration and especially on a regional level is vitally important as we move forward. Well, Kerry, we are towards the end here, and I just want to open it up. If there are any events coming up in Southern Arizona that would be open to the public or education opportunities or can members of the public

join your organization, or is it specific for government employees or organizations that do economic development? No, we are open membership. We do have two levels. So we have like an economic developer level, and then for the private side. Well, we also have elected official level. So membership is open to anybody that just wants to come in and have a conversation around economic development. All of these issues that we discussed today are things that we discuss on a weekly, daily basis. Within the organization. We have a number of committees that are doing amazing work, and one of them is the Southern Arizona Committee. So they have a lot of mixers down in that area. They work with a lot of organizations in that area as well to point on joint programming. So definitely get involved with the Southern Arizona Committee if you want to join our organization, it’s a good group. In August, they’re going to have a big Dei discussion around economic development. I’m really looking forward to

that discussion down there. And then we are also starting our Azed pro classes up again. So in the end of June, we’re having marketing and business development class and we’re doing a lot of hands on. Like this is how you put a video together and edit it to promote your business or community and those types of hands on training. So a variety of different things that you can get involved with. You can get involved as much or as little as you want, but really just sort of sharing good information like we want to hear from everybody. There’s not a specific type of person that we want in the organization. It’s just the best ideas forward. So very open and we’d love to have anybody that wants to come join us. And all that information I found on your very expansive website. Aaed.com, thank you as always. You can reach out to me at any time. I’m easy to find on LinkedIn. Happy to talk to anybody down in the Tucson area. Well, Kerry Kelly giving art history majors hope in the economic world. And

I appreciate you moving from California to Arizona and from what I know, doing a fantastic job. And I thank you for your time today. Thank you. It’s been awesome. That was Kerry Kelly. She’s the executive director for the Arizona Association of Economic Development. And again, it’s a statewide organization, but they were here in Tucson for their recent conference and had a nice tour of our urban area along the streetcar. So we wanted to touch base with her and get a sense of how things are progressing as we pull through this pandemic and try to get back into an economic development footing. And I always appreciate when busy people take time to share stories with us. My name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to Life Along the Streetcar on Downtown Radio, 99.1 FM and available for streaming on Downtownradio.org. This podcast is sponsored by the Mortgage Guidance Group and Noble Home Loans. If you enjoyed this podcast, keep listening or head over to Lifelongthstreetcar.org for all of our past

episodes, current events and things to do while visiting Tucson. Tom Heath and a MLS number 182420 Nova and a MLS number 3087.

Always. When you’re getting your swag on, take a look at all the cool shows that we have here for you on Downtown radio. We have Monday through Saturday a really good rock mix, and then here on Sundays. They open it up for talk shows like Hours and Words and work with Ted Cruzelski which follows us and then Ty Logan at the top of the hour. Then we get into more music in the afternoon and of course Sunday start off with Mr. Nature little leaf radio DJ bank self described musical bone. But the man is anything but. He is a musical genius in my mind and that is a good way to start your Sundays of course. And then we always appreciate that you might stick around after DJ bank show and catch a little bit of the economic, cultural and social events happening here in the urban core. Next week we’re going to talk to we’re going to talk a little bit about the children’s Museum. Haven’t had them on the show after five years. I think it’s about time we hit this downtown icon and today I’m going to

leave you with a little music from a group called the Strike. This is off of a 2017 album called Faint of Heart and in honor of our topic today, the title of the song is economic.

My name is Tom Heath. I hope you have a great week and tune in next Sunday for more life along the streetcar.

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