In February, Markham McIntyre agreed to leave his job as the vice president of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce to lead the Seattles Office of Economic Development (OED) as its new interim director.
In a city facing record economic and social upheaval, he knows he has his work cut out for him, from downtown crime and the return of workers to the thorny relationship with Amazon. Given the size of the citys tech community, he also knows that some of the solutions to the citys issues will be found through an improved relationship with that community.
McIntyre recently spoke with GeekWire to explain why he took the gig, what hed like to fix first, working with the tech industry, and more. The interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
GeekWire: Why did you take the job?
Markham McIntyre: Because I deeply love this city. Im a Seattleite born and raised. Coming from the Chamber, I have some ideas about how to improve OED. This is just an incredibly crucial moment for Seattles future as we come out of the pandemic and start returning to the office and start figuring out the economy, what the opportunities are, and making sure that the city is doing its best to try and make sure that Seattle continues to be an area of prosperity. Its just an incredible opportunity for the for the city for the region, and for our residents.
What do you think the city needs to do to better communicate and innovate with the tech community?
If we can be more clear about what the city can and cant deliver, then we can bring other partners to the table whether its at the private sector through philanthropy or other kinds of public bodies into those shared objectives and common problem solving. The citys got to be willing to get uncomfortable in those conversations because I know theres a lack of trust sometimes between the city and our tech community.
Weve got to repair that trust. Weve also got to be willing to talk about some of these thorny, difficult issues. Whether theyre social or economic, issues that dont necessarily have easy answers or cant be solved with a quick product or an app. Workforce diversity, wage disparities, and affordability issues. We should have those conversations and be willing for it to be a little bit messy. I think thats going to be crucial for us to stay at the forefront of kind of the innovation economy.
Do you feel like that is a priority for the first few months in office? Or do you feel like youre going to be more focused on post-pandemic economic recovery?
Weve got to do both. Weve got certain industries and certain businesses that still require some level of emergency relief and recovery type efforts. And then weve got some businesses and industries that made it through the pandemic much better and are well poised to take off. In the OED, weve got to have strategies that address both. Again, were not going to do that in a silo and expect that the city or this office is going to be able to do it alone. Weve got to do that through partnerships, through communication, and through trust building with some of those other players throughout the region.
Speaking of such, some downtown companies are not bringing their workers back to the office, citing crime as a concern. Other tech companies have relocated to Bellevue, saying its a panacea for business. How does the Office of Economic Development respond to this? The businesses are not really speaking to problems that are specifically within your purview.
The citys got to be willing to get uncomfortable in those conversations because I know theres a lack of trust sometimes between the city and our tech community.
Economic recovery for the region and for the state wont happen until weve got demonstrable improvement on the streets in downtown Seattle. Downtown Seattle is a huge economic driver for the state and to the region. And its really the symbol of our prosperity.Until we have progress, both on the public safety and also on issues around people experiencing homelessness, its going to be really hard to say that were recovering, or that were turning the corner into a city thats thriving again.
Were working with our partners. Were working with the mayors office, the Seattle Police Department, and the Department of Neighborhoods on what we can do and how we can play a positive role. We can communicate what businesses are saying to us about what theyre hearing and what their needs are. Weve got to get a handle both on the short-term acute problems that people are dealing with right now like broken windows for businesses and problems with public safety around the transit corridors.
But weve also got to stay focused on the long-term solutions about getting people more economically stable with pathways for upward mobility. I see the OEDs role as helping coordinate with those other departments that have a more direct role in public safety.
How important is it to get people back in the office in downtown Seattle?
I think its pretty darn important. Not just for those employers. I think its also important for those main-street businesses that are going to rely on foot traffic as people return to the office. Looking at it as an ecosystem, that foot traffic drives a lot of small business prosperity. Without that there, it does create a gap. I dont know that everyones going to be returning to the office five days a week. Were going to go through a little bit of a messy period as people adjust to returning to the office, and figuring out what that means for some of those main street businesses. But I think its vital to the future of downtown.
Lets talk a little bit about the natural tension within the clients of your office. What is good for Amazon isnt necessarily good for a small company and vice-versa. How do you deal with the inherent tension of serving the big tech companies in town, the skyscraper-established businesses, and the smaller ones as well?
Businesses are unique and you cant just group them by size and assume that it really explains what their needs are or where theyre going. Different-sized businesses are going to need different things and different levels of resources. How do we help small businesses grow into mid-sized businesses? And then how do we help those mid-size businesses grow into future giants? We tend to focus a lot on startups. And we tend to focus a lot of time and energy on the big guys. Theres less attention paid to some of those folks in the middle. Thats super important and an area Id like the OED to explore what those opportunities look like.
Id also say that for OED, we also need to recognize that a lot of those larger businesses have staff that deal with public policy or community affairs or government affairs. A lot of the smaller businesses dont. Weve got to be intentional about how we bring some of those smaller businesses to the table and make sure that they have a voice in some of these economic development discussions, knowing full well that theyve got businesses to run. And its not necessarily their top priority to come sit at our table. Weve got to figure out a way to make sure that theyre included so were not (only dealing with) the big guys who have staff that are paid to do this stuff.
We cant pit our large employers against our small employers.
What should the tech community be doing to work better with OED?
Thats a two-part answer. I think actually it does start with us, because I think the city doesnt have great trust with our businesses generally, or the tech community specifically. I think weve got to figure out how to repair that trust. And I think that starts with us listening, and communicating better, who we are, who we serve, why do we serve them and how. So I think weve got a role to play in repairing that relationship.
But what I need from the tech community is true engagement. I would love to see more public-private partnerships, where we can actually work on some of these shared objectives, and bring to bear what the tech community does really well and bring to bear what the city does really well and play to our strengths.
Give me an example of a partnership between the city and the tech community that you think addresses an existing problem?
Ill give you an existing partnership that I think is a good example of what Id love to see more of: theHousing Connectororganization. Thats a great example where the city and the county were having trouble interfacing with landlords because theres a little bit of a trust issue. But the city came to the Chamber and said, Hey, weve got some funding to think about how we set this up differently. Can we work together to do this? We said yes, because we had a bit more trust with the landlords. Very quickly it became apparent that Zillow also cared deeply about this issue, and it had some technical expertise to bring to the table as well as resources.
By using the city and county funding to catalyze this new-look organization and then Zillow coming in and being able to supercharge it with both talent and their resources, its now housing people here locally and in Pierce County and its growing into potentially a national model. And it exists outside of either the citys or Zillows portfolio; it spun off and now its a healthy organization unto itself. As I said earlier, its using the leverage, the resources from the city and the county, and then the expertise from Zillow to build something thats durable and can scale up.
Would you like to see the tech community also identify those partnership areas, or do you feel like thats OEDs job?
I think theres this weird thing in Seattle, where the tech community gets kind of othered. And the reality is, Im pretty sure the tech community wants what most Seattleites want, which is high functioning governments, beautiful and safe neighborhoods, lots of lovely restaurants and kind of vibrancy to the city. I think theres a huge opportunity, theres plenty of shared objectives that we could find.
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Q&A with Seattles new economic development chief on working with the tech industry - GeekWire
