By Jonathan Turner, jturner@qconline.com

Photo: Submitted The Quad Cities First team is, front from left, Tara Barney and Rick Baker, and back, Liz Murray Tallman, Nathan Sondgeroth, Mat Pruitt, Bob Lundin and Daniel Mann.

Quad Cities First -- the new business group led by the main chambers of commerce in the area -- is hitting the ground running.

While it has its own 17-member board that has met monthly since October, the organization that replaced the 48-year-old Quad City Development Group does not have its own employees or members.

The new structure has added staff to the Illinois Quad City and Iowa Quad-Cities chambers, including a first external salesman promoting the region to site selectors and companies, and is compiling a new long-range strategic plan.

"I think we've made remarkable progress in the short time we've been in existence," Rick Baker, president/CEO of the Illinois Q-C chamber, said. "The staff has come together in ways I didn't think would be possible in this amount of time."

"Certainly between the chambers, there is far better coordination and communication," said David Green, Q-C First chairman and CEO of the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center. "I would characterize the cooperation as exceptional."

Quad Cities First launched last September, focusing on marketing the region to companies to boost job growth. The Q-C has a jobless rate of 9.2 percent, compared to 6 percent a year ago. The former DavenportOne reorganized as the Iowa Q-C chamber, later absorbing the former Bettendorf Chamber of Commerce.

Two former QCDG employees -- Mat Pruitt and Liz Tallman -- are on the chamber staff as vice presidents for regional business development, each with a different specialty in terms of the state and type of business they usually address. Nathan Sondgeroth, former head of Greater Davenport Redevelopment Corp. under DavenportOne, is another member of the team with the same VP title.

Daniel Mann, 35, is new vice president of national business development, on the Illinois Q-C chamber payroll, but working for the region. The Tulsa native was the 2007 Northeast Oklahoma Economic Developer of the Year, and worked 10 years for the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce that oversees an area with a population of 900,000.

Mr. Mann also was director of the Tulsa Area Partnership, a 20-county northeast Oklahoma organization similar to Q-C First. He's responsible for attracting new employers to the area -- in part by attending national corporate real-estate conferences, site location consultant networking events, industry trade shows, headquarters of companies with operations here, and trips targeting companies, site consultants and corporate real-estate execs.

"He has a demonstrated track record of the kind of results we're looking for," Mr. Green said. "He'll help in the long term in getting our name out."

"He's got relationships with a lot of site-selection consulting companies. It's a matter of connecting with them," Mr. Baker said.

Mr. Green said QC First's focus is on sales and marketing. "We're not engaged in tertiary activities. We're committed to ensuring we get the Quad-Cities name, brand and value we bring to others within the country and across the world, so we can sell what we have."

When Mr. Mann has a prospect, he can hand them off to sales and marketing staff, who serve as a single point of contact throughout the process. The chamber staff focuses on expanding existing businesses in the area.

"In terms of economic development, traditionally about 85 percent of your growth is expansion of existing business," Ms. Tallman said. "It's that other 15 percent that is bringing the new dollars and new business in."

She said the new structure is "a laser focus, to take our regional economic development to the next level. In the past, we tended to try to be everything to everyone. We'd not get back to what really needs to be done in sales, with that external marketing. That's what Daniel has been brought in for."

"It seems like the flow of information is much smoother, much quicker," Mr. Pruitt said.

"The new model is seamless. It's so much easier now," said Mr. Sondgeroth, who has overseen Davenport's industrial sites. "With organizational cohesiveness, it just flows a lot more seamlessly."

Rather than focusing on Illinois or Iowa locations, the sales/marketing staff promote the area's 300 available buildings and 300 available, buildable sites. If given a lead from a state official, they work strictly with locations in that state.

"People are doing work for both organizations, working together on projects," Mr. Baker said of the chambers. The senior leaders meet weekly, and the entire staff of about 30 meets monthly. (Former Bettendorf Chamber chief Bob Lundin is at the Davenport office heading surveys and a database of businesses to determine their needs and impediments to expansion.)

"There's much less of a competitive environment than it used to be," Mr. Baker said of the two sides of the Mississippi River. "As long as we're multiple cities and two states, we'll always have competition, but what we're learning is when it does more harm than good."

The QC First board is working with the consulting firm Angelou Economics of Austin, Texas, to complete a new strategic plan by mid-March. This is the same consultant that helped produce Blueprint 2010 for the Illinois Q-C chamber, Mr. Baker said.

The plan will identify goals and priorities -- including a new branding and marketing plan, with an updated Web site and single phone number -- that are "very measurable, implementable," he said.

"Our region has not devoted enough time and attention to getting the word out in a consistent, sustained way," said Betsy Brandsgard, executive vice president for the Iowa Q-C chamber.

Even with the recession, "it was important to do this anyway," Mr. Baker said of the new organization, partly to give the two chambers' 2,200 members better return on their investment. "The economy helped facilitate the need. Sometimes, when the economy tightens up, it forces people to re-evaluate what's going on."

About half the Bettendorf chamber's 622 members were Iowa Q-Cmembers, and the rest were automatically folded in. A fundraising campaign will be introduced this year to support QC First goals.

Mr. Mann is not waiting on the strategic plan for direction. He's been meeting with local and state partners in economic development and has appointments booked next week out of the area.

"I'm not waiting on anything," he said. "I wasn't hired to wait around. We're hitting the ground running."

"This group has that laser-like focus to deliver results," said Mr. Green, also vice chairman for the Iowa-side chamber. "We are also sensitive to the multiple entities in the communities that bring economic development."

QC First and its improvements reflect better management of staff and resources "so we can achieve greater value with the effort," he said. "It's not a case of adding (staff) so much as aligning activities."

"I definitely can't do this alone," Mr. Mann said. "We truly need to align our resources as one, to move the region forward as a whole."

Tara Barney, CEOof the Iowa Q-C chamber, said there is renewed clarity of purpose.

"We're very intent on getting a robust marketing strategy organized, being very proactive in getting out," she said. "We've got more leads coming from our network of existing businesses than we have had before. It's been fantastic."

The new plan also will address how the organization can consolidate its real estate. The chambers have staff working out of five offices -- including the main chamber locations, the old QCDGoffice in Rock Island, the New Ventures Center in Davenport (where the Iowa chamber owns the first floor), and the old Bettendorf office.

"Wehave a lot of real estate to sort out," Ms. Barney said.





Easy access to site, work force information a priority for QC First

The Illinois Quad City and Iowa Quad-Cities chambers have made improvements to online inventories of available commercial sites and prospect-management system, and are updating information about the region's employment pool.

The former Quad City Development Group (QCDG) traditionally updated information on properties, but not regularly as a whole, said Mat Pruitt, vice president of regional business development at the Illinois Quad City Chamber of Commerce.

Not only is all the information current on the new Quad Cities First Web site (www.quadcitiesfirst.com), but municipal economic-development departments have access to the database and can make changes and additions, he said.

"Site selectors are looking for communities and properties. To have this information up to date, Web-based, all of our inventory out there, we're gonna get more site-selection companies looking at us," said Liz Tallman, vice president for regional business development at the Iowa Q-C chamber.

Cities now have access to an internal Web-based prospect-management system, which tracks where chamber staff are working with employers interested in relocating or expanding in the area. That includes the status of communication with each prospect and scheduled meetings and/or phone calls.

The local government staffs only have permission to see projects related to their city, Mr. Pruitt said. People can log in to post information or make an appointment (or task) for someone else.

The QC First marketing effort will benefit from a new survey under way to provide a snapshot of the region's employment pool. The QCDGtypically did such a survey every other year, but the last one was in 2007, Mr. Pruitt said. The laborshed employment study has been mailed to more than 2,000 area employers, seeking information such as employee skills, training, job responsibilities and education levels.

Results will be compiled into a look at the region's potential labor force to help existing businesses as well as those considering bringing jobs to the area, and also will be added to the Web site.

"When any business looks to grow or relocate, one of the first things they look for is a qualified work force," Mr. Pruitt said. "They use the laborshed to understand if there is a qualified application pool; the better the information, the high probability of successfully growing business in the Quad-Cities."

The study -- which will include representative phone surveys to gather demographic information -- is being completed with Iowa Workforce Development.

The results will help attract the types of targeted industries the region wants to attract such as manufacturing, information technology, other high-tech business, food processing, logistics and alternative energy, Mr. Pruitt said.

In addition to existing education levels of workers, the chambers use the number of higher education opportunities within a 100-mile radius and training programs to lure new jobs, he noted. Ms. Tallman said employees' willingness to commute up to 50 miles to work is positive for employers.

"You have to look at your laborshed, which is bi-state," said Daniel Mann, new vice president of national business development. "If a new employer comes in, that's what they look for in the laborshed, where they can get work force from."

"The greatest assets are your people, the quality of the work force," he said. "The work ethic of the work force is good. Another great asset for the Quad-Cities region is the transportation network, truly a multi-modal network. Another great asset is the ease of commute. You can get anywhere within the Quad-Cities in 20 minutes."

"I see a lot of opportunity," Mr. Mann said of attracting new jobs to the area.

"We have a huge asset of 400,000 population. We compete very well compared to other communities in Iowa or Illinois," Ms. Tallman said. With the rough state of the economy, this is "the perfect time to do what we're doing."