chamber to be boosters but we also have with us chris ryeco, senior vice president of devita in denver. >> a little bit about devita first we're a health care city focused on the dialysis of space but recently expanded in a broader health care. but so i was interested in earlier today affordable care. we're delighted to call denver home. about three years ago, we announced our decision to relocate from california to colorado. and we've done that in about a month. we're going to do brand-new world headquarters in a very special part of lower downtown denver of significant redevelopment effort. da vita is a company that cares for 140,000 people with 40,000 plus teammates that's what we call our care givers in 2700

locations across america. we're delighted that denver is home. we'll talk some more during this session about why we made that decision. there's lots of factors that went into it. sufficed to say, we believed that we were moving to a community that would embrace us and support us in many, many ways and denver and city and county of denver and the state of althou of colorado has outperformed in that regard. delighted to be here and part of the discussion. >> thank you, chris. that was the denver delegation. now, we're going to flip to the other side of the country and go to pittsburgh. pittsburgh does have the distinction, kelly mentioned how important it is historically to be on a body of water. pittsburgh on not one, but three, the intersection of three rivers there. first, we're going to hear from the honorable rich fitzgerald, the executive director of allegheny county, obviously, pittsburgh being most of the allegheny county. rich. >> first of all, i want to thank

the chamber for not only having us but recognizes the success that pittsburgh has become over the last couple years. you know, we probably led when the industrial hit happened in the late '70s and early '80s and probably suffered more than anybody with job loss and population loss. and it's taken us many, many years to work towards finding a solution. and if i had to synthesize our success over the last few years in a couple of words it would be cooperation and diversity. we have really cooperated among -- have a lot of cooperation among the institutions. among government working with business and government, public/private partnerships with our universities. our universities, we've got nine major universities in allegheny county, working together. and they work with the government sector and with business to partner. and then also, i would add in our labor unions. our labor unions have been terrific partners with us in providing the type of partnership and workforce

development that i hear about all the time. i heard the governors previously talk about that being one of the barriers. and we see the same thing with a lot of jobs that are available right now, particularly, not necessarily high-skilled jobs, although we do have those, too. we have actually 1500 engineering jobs right in the city of pittsburgh that are unfilled right now. but we also have jobs for technicians, for welders, for machinists and in working with the labor community, there's a great cooperation with owners, with management, to make them more efficient, make them more competitive and make better products and more marketable products. so we've we've been able to do over the last years is remarkable. the housing stock, the housing values over the last five years have also held the nation in appreciation, as we've seen jobs

grow in a variety of areas. and, again, when i talk about diversity, you know, obviously, we used to be known for steel and heavy manufacturing. we still make a lot of steel. but what's changed in steel is steel doesn't make it with the labor force that they used to. it's much more automated. but we've had major investments in our steel mills. in our stainless steel mills. we also have a burgeoning chemistry industry. we were here with beyer, and we'll talk about that. and i.t. spinoffs with cmu and pitt. having major presences with folks like google. we're one of the major rails, for the rail industry, making the rail, making the cars, making the controls and making the switches for people-movers all over the world. so we have, again, a of course diverse -- a very diverse economy. and one of the things that i would really highlight over the change of the 30 years that i

talked about is 30 years ago, our 25 to 35-year-old workforce was one of the least educated in america. pass fast to 30 years later, our 25 to 35-year-old workforce is the highest educated in the country when it comes to postgraduate degrees. that's been a major transformation as we continue to invest in education, invest in our workers and invest in the faux that are there. right now, we continue to work on attracting talent, quality of life issues that have really made a great difference in our rege aren. >> thank you, rich. next up is dennis yablonsky. >> good afternoon. in case you don't know what an allegheny conference here we represent the southwest area.

for 81 who grew up in pittsburgh, being here today say bit amazing. if you go back 30 years, 1983, our low point, our regional unemployment rate was 18.3%. think about that for a minute. 18.3%. today, it's 6.7% and dropping. and the real fundamental question we want to talk with you all today is how? what happened? what does pittsburgh do? and fundamentally, there are three things done over 30 years persistently and as the county executive said with collaboration. one, we did not stop doing what we were doing-g at. which was making things, financing it and providing the energy that you need to operate it. those three industries have been reinvented through the core in the regional economy. two, we leveraged world class and billion-dollar research there to create job industries

that didn't exist 30 years ago. software, robotics, health care, medical devices, et cetera. today, there's over 1600 medical technologies country. we invested in the place. we went hell with the lid taken off which is how a british author described pittsburgh in the '40s to the most livable city in america the last four years in a row. we invested in air, the water, riverfront, housing, education, health care, et cetera, et cetera. for those of you never been to pittsburgh or haven't been there the last ten years, i guarantee you, you will be shocked if you come and visit the place. as a result, we're here today. we're stunned and proud. with that, we'll turn it over to greg. >> great, dennis. next up to greg bay. greg is the president and ceo of the bayer corporation and the chair of the greater pittsburgh chamber of commerce, also the

vice chair on community development. greg, it's good to have you with us. >> thank you, nick. thanks, everyone, for coming today and the chamber. bayer corporation is the u.s. arm of the global buyer or bayer organization. we have three businesses, one which you probably will recognize from a product that maybe you took this morning with bayer 80 milligram aspirin. but we have a business which helps to diagnosis and cure and prevent disease. we also have less known to many people, a large-crop science -- bayer crop science business which focuses on enhancing yields, crop yields, as well as securing the food supply. and finally, we have a material science business which is a high-tech polymer business which developing research in the application of these materials

to improve energy efficiency, to improve security, as well as to make our everyday lives simpler. unlike chris, we're not newcomers to pittsburgh. also, a surprise with such a prominent health care play. pittsburgh has been our headquarters for over 50 years now. we started there with a handful of people, in one building. and have grown with the city from that period of time to 2700 employees in the pittsburgh area. we have more than 50 sites across the country. i have 13,000 employees in the united states. across those 50 sites, 2700 of those sit at pittsburgh and not only are they doing headquarters type of work, but they're also doing basic research in medical devices and high-tech polymers. we have stayed for over 50 years in pittsburgh because of the tremendous work ethic, because of the universities. i mentioned we do basic research there so the universities are

critical. to bayer science for a better life, that is our tag line, innovation is everything that we do. and pittsburgh is a great place to innovate. >> great. greg, great. >> so, remember, you have pieces of paper on your table, so we encourage you to write down questions and submit them. but i want to draw together a couple of threads, some things that i was hearing from all the participants. one, is the importance of workforce to the success of the area. this is something tom talked about in his remarks, the importance of human capital. so maybe, mike, we can start with you, and then if others want to chime in. when you think about that, about the workforce issue. there are a couple of components. one could be -- tom mentioned immigration. one is bringing in the people who can do the jobs that are necessary. another is trying to develop the workforce that's already there. what are things that cities can

do to try to improve the workforce situation, so that businesses are attracted to come there, or that businesses can grow organically that are already there? >> i think first and foremost, obviously, we work very closely with the school system to make sure there's zero tolerance in the community for failing schools or failing systems. and that's one thing that we have been working to really improve upon in denver. we've come in, we've created the education compact which brought together the private sector higher education partners to help us to define really actionable goals that we can make an impact on. let me just tell you it started even a few years before then when denver passed what we quality denver preschool program tax. and 1/12th percent of a sales tax goes to support and ensure that every 4-year-old in denver can go to preschool or early

child education program. that is our way of saying that we believe if we're going to build a strong workforce, it starts with our very young and making sure that they are school ready when they enter into kindergarten at age 5. when we know they come into kindergarten at prepared and ready, they typically are -- i can tell you, the third grade glass just left third grade, on their way to fourth, first time, read at -- were tested at proficient at their grade level or above, 80% of them which as you can imagine far outpaces those kids who did not go through our program in denver. so we are making a commitment through the whole pipeline to make sure our kids are school-ready. making sure that they are proficient at third grade reading and that they're graduating. that helps to signal in the private sector, partners to look at denver, that we are committed

to building a strong prepared workforce. >> that's got to be music to margaret's ears right there. rich, in pittsburgh, maybe in addition focus on education which is historical strength of pittsburgh. what are some other things? >> it is the level. but it also is, as i go around on a daily basis, visiting companies with our economic development director the one thing i hear about is workforce development. that is the number one issue by far. and one of the things we try to do, we try to partner, again, as we talked about collaboration, being whatever our customers need to try to give them the help that they need, or what they need typically is workforce training. so we've developed our community college system to really be very flexible in the curriculum that we provide with our that's rights. so if there's a need for companies to have welders, for example. we have a welding program at one of the community college campuses. it it has to do with lab technicians or chemical testing,

whatever that may be. we have a burgeoning energy system with the shell gas being right where we are, there's been a great influx and great growth in people with those jobs. but they need to be trained. they need to be trained to go out and work on the natural gas rig and to be able to do the piping and controls and testing that need to be done. so we try to provide our community college and work with our universities to try to provide -- meet those needs. and as i mentioned before, again, our trade unions have some of the best training facilities in the country to bring people along. >> and how does that -- on the community college front, are you going out to the cities? or are they coming to you? how does it work so that you're developing a curriculum that's going to work for them, say, five or ten years? >> a little bit of both. we do go to them and we ask them what they're going to need. so many of our companies talk about the fact that they're going to be hiring 100 workers over the next five years, or 30

workers. it really goes both ways. they often bring it to us, but we go out and talk to them. >> we've got a question from the audience which is about small business. now, i know there's a lot of cities and metros that think it's really important to attract a big whale, get a big company to move a huge base of operations, say, to their area. but there's another way of looking at it which is focusing on small business. maybe, dennis, if we can start with you and if others chime in, how do you think of small business for creating jobs in pittsburgh and surrounding areas? >> the question highlights a very important point and that is the attractions from out of region get the most publicity. but in any healthy economy, 80%, 90% of the jobs are going to be created either by new startups or by existing companies that are expanding. the tractions are important, too, but never going to dominate your economy. as a region, if you're not

focusing on small businesses which continue to provide the jobs in america, you're going to have a case. in our case, maybe the most noteworthy, we have this $1 billion a year research set of institutions that are doing all of these wonderful work on research. we've worked very hard over the last 30 years to commercialize more and more of that research. and that involves the universities, active participation in tech transfer. policies and operations. it involves early-stage places incubators if you will where companies can get started and nurtured. and early risk capital to finance these businesses and we've worked very hard in a public/private way. state, local governments, businesses and the private sector have all been involved in trying to make that work. >> kelly, what about for you guys, the focus on small business? >> small business is -- we actually have a slogan, small

business is big business in colorado. 50% -- or 90% of our businesses have less than 100 employees. the federal government defines small as less than 500. for us, that's big. so a huge part of our strategy is around how do we help those businesses be successful and hire and drive jobs and ensure that they can grow in colorado. we are the fourth -- we are the fourth state in the country to have one employee organizations. that means, right, there's one person that works and it's me for this company. and we're the fourth largest number -- of all the states, we are number four in terms of the number of those we have. and during the recession, one of the things we looked into is why is that, and we believe because we have a more educated workforce, what tended to happen as people might have lost a job, they tended to start their own business and take that jump. and we think creating an environment that allows people to take the risk and having the workforce who has the capacity

to do it can make all the difference to create that and for sure you have less unemployment as well. >> i've got an excellent question from somebody in the audience who points out that both pittsburgh and denver have hosted major recents in recent years. denver, the democratic convention. pittsburgh had a g-20 summit. both of those kinds of things cost a lot of money to put on. so this person is wondering if the costs and disruptions to the city -- do the benefits of having it there outweigh those? and how should other cities think about these things? >> well, we were very proud that president obama picked pittsburgh to host the g-20 a couple years ago talking about cities that had transformed themselves, and it was one of the first examples of what we we were. and one of the things the president was talking about was sustainability, and energy efficiency and green. and we have really embraced green in our city. lead certified buildings, our convention center is the highest

lead certification that there is the most in the world. and it draws a lot of people. there's a lot of tourism dollars, there's a lot of conventions that want to be socially responsible. and they come to pittsburgh because we have the most sustainable, the greenest convention center. and our buildings that are downtown, we talked about the financial sector, pnc is one of the major -- biggest banks in the world. and they're building a $400 million skyscraper right in the heart of downtown pittsburgh. it's going to be highest lead-certified building in the world. so we have really embraced that. as far as the cost goes, yeah, there was inconvenience. but our folks, we were willing to do that because we were so proud that the world was coming to our city, to our region, and we wanted to show it off, so, you know, we were willing to put up with some of the inconvenience that comes with security, of hosting the world leaders. there was a cost to it. but i think the benefits far outweighed that because it

was -- it enabled us to show off our city. to talk about some of the things that we have. and it did attract some businesses that we were able to gain from that. attract some businesses that we were able to gain from that. >> from a pittsburgh perspective as well, rich's point is absolutely right. it's put a spotlight, a very positive spotlight. when you look at what's happened since g-20 in pittsburgh, the following yeerp we were able to attract the united nations environmental program to select pittsburgh as the most city in the united states for world environment day. and this particular year we're the host city of one young world, which is the sort of the younger generation. the 25s and under. so we're looking at thousands of young potential employees or migrants into the immigrants into pittsburgh who are going to

be in pittsburgh this year talking about some very, very meaty issues. i think that you can leverage these as well in a very intelligent way, back to rich's point about public-private partnerships each one of these has a partnership associated with it where the private sector is equally engaged as the public sector. >> you know, you can't pay for the kind of marketing exposure your cities get from hosting these sort of events for four or five days denver was the focal point of the entire world. we were about to dominate the first ever african-american for president of united states. it was a major party convention. you cannot put a dollar figure on that kind of marketing. that's first and foremost. right after the convention, the

good news is everyone knows about denver now. the bad news is everyone knows about denver now. that's the beauty of the dilemma that you run into. the second thing is i could have not have been proud of the regional cooperation that emerged as part of the planning, execution to walk around denver to see sheriffs and police officers from all over the metro region proud to represent the region to the world was extre extremely gratifying to watch. finally the result, the multiplier that oed as a result today we are reaping the benefits. denver is one of the top convention destinations in the world as a result of it. people are coming. we are sold out for years. still come and ask. we have minimum convention opportunities because our time on the calendar because of the number of conventions that are coming to denver. you can trace that directly back to the convention being in denver and the exposure we got

result of it. >> i happen to be chief of staff for then mayor when the dnc came to town. i would just say that's the role you don't want to be in. what was so powerful it's so true presenting your city to the world was a wonderful experience. i think the most powerful thing that came out of it from my perspective is we changed our own minds about what was possible. i think we as a region and a community started to see ourselves as being able to achieve things we never thought we could have achieved before. and i think that might be the more powerful transformation that occurred from that experience because you sort of now believe there is no limit in what we're capable of doing. >> so another question to chris and to greg, it's a question about quality of life issues and how much it matters in boosting growth in the city. i want to direct it to chris and

greg. >> chris, your company had made a decision about where to locate. obviously you had a lot of options. talk a little bit about what sort of quality of life things mattered as you guys went to make that decision. and then greg, you've stayed, benefits were you stayed in pittsburgh for a very long period of time, you find something about the quality of life there. you obviously need to recruit people to come and work there. what is it about pittsburgh that you can sell the most. maybe chris, we'll start with you and then greg. >> the quality of life in denver is an easy thing to talk about. we're graced and lucky to be in a part of the country with a wonderful climate. access to wonderful recreation and lots of folks who have moved there from other places who genuinely like to engage for each other. for us on a number of measures, on the high level the way things are the weather supported.

are there recreation opportunities. deeper than that, how can our teammates engage in the community? what are they going to find when they're engaged? a welcoming community in a very deep way or a very shallow way? are we going to find great schools? great infrastructure. are they going to be able to get on their bicycles and ride around the city of denver from one end to the other. there are dozens and dozens of factors of the quality of life that we considered. the easy ones are obvious. that's why we have a lot of folks who move to colorado and say i don't have a job, but i like it here. we have a lot of inbound migration that helps us as employers. part of the quality of life of folks that live in colorado is the fact we have a community that allows us to engage in a powerful way. that raises the quality of life for all of our almost 1,000 teammates today. >> we have the mayor here, i have to put you on the spot. what would you like to see

improve when it comes to quality of life? >> i wish the weather would get better. 3 if the mayor could stop the fires in northern colorado we'd be happy. it's getting smokey in denver. the greatest thing i think about our decision here it's a big thing, is the collaborative nature of how the city government, state governments, local business leaders have come together and so to mayor hancock i say this is a continuum to invest. there's a huge commitment to collaborating with a business community. not just to get jobs, but because we want to have the right people be in our community and engage in it. our company has done that over the last few years. thousands and thousands of hours in volunteer time. let's continue to do that and we're doing a great job.

>> i think first and foremost we have the steelers. but i won't repeat some of the things i said earlier in terms of access to universities and employees that's very important. but whether you're at a site in a city for five years or 50 years as chris knows they've made the decision you're always assessing whether you're at the right place. it's an important part of the fid judiciary responsible as business heads. we've made that decision many times in pittsburgh. i think for us not just university access for our employees, but also for our employees' children is a critical issue.

the quality of education in the primary, secondary schools and at the university level is a great selling point for pittsburgh. it's certainly a strength. the other issue is cost of living. we do an ajessment of our sites. we have more than 50 across the country and we probably have half a dozen that i would consider to be major sites in new jersey andra lee and pittsburgh in berkeley, in houston, kansas city. when we look -- we benchmark those sites and those major areas every year pittsburgh is the lowest cost that we have. across the country. when you make a combination of low cost, low cost of living. which means a lower cost of operation for us combined with an outstanding education system and a great supply of trained

scientists which we have more than those, that's really our life blood, that's a great combo. it's a great secure place to live and to raise a family. that's important to all of our employees as you could imagine. and for those reasons we've stayed for 50 years and every couple of years we'll make that assessment again. i think pittsburgh continues year afterier to be our choice for those reasons. >> i saw joel nodding voig rousely. rich ishlg i'll ask this of you and maybe mayor hancock. how do you measure success? one of the things that we can talk about all the things that we like to do, that doesn't mean that much if we can't say we