MoCo Economic Development Corp. Releases Annual Stats

Nearly 900 jobs were created in fiscal year 2018

Montgomery County Economic Development Corp. Twitter

Nearly 900 jobs were created and more than 3,800 were retained in Montgomery County during the past fiscal year, which also saw more than $375 million in capital investment, according to statistics recently released by the Montgomery County Economic Development Corp.

The MCEDC was started two years ago as a public/private partnership and nonprofit that helps promote economic growth in the county. The agency’s annual report, which encompasses the period between Oct. 1, 2017, and Sept. 30, provides a picture of the county’s economic health. According to MCEDC President and CEO David Petr, the majority of the jobs created—864—were in the areas of biotechnology and life sciences. He said the real estate industry also got a boost due to the move of JBG Smith’s headquarters to Bethesda from Chevy Chase.

“The joy for me is not only facilitating job creation and capital investment, but ensuring that it’s diverse throughout our county,” he said.

Other highlights of the report include:

More than $600 million in venture capital investment;

Marriott International’s groundbreaking on its new downtown Bethesda headquarters;

The expansion of the Nonprofit Village, which is an incubator space in Rockville that houses several nonprofit organizations.

The creation of MoCo Made, which is an initiative of both MCEDC and the Montgomery County Food Council that encourages residents to buy local.

Amazon’s announcement that the county is on its shortlist of metropolitan areas for its second headquarters. The company is expected to announce its choice of location at the end of the year.

Despite the media hype over news about big-name companies such as Amazon and Marriott, Petr said his organization’s focus is on attracting smaller businesses with 500 employees or less.

One of the goals for the next fiscal year, he said, is to help secure three commercial research and development agreements, which are agreements between private businesses and federal agencies. He said it is important that companies take advantage of the 18 federal agencies located in the county.

“We want to help companies use that intellectual knowledge and create a business,” he said.

The MCEDC report comes five months after Empower Montgomery, a nonprofit that advocates on transportation, education and economic development, commissioned a study that found the county experienced a net loss of 909 jobs combined between the public and private sectors from 2006 to 2016. The report also stated that the median home sales price hadn’t fully rebounded to levels before the 2008 recession and that there was a 13 percent direct vacancy rate for commercial office buildings.

County Council member Marc Elrich, a Democrat running for county executive, said Thursday he thought the Empower Montgomery report’s job numbers had been “cherry-picked,” and didn’t account for the number of entrepreneurs that had started new businesses in the county during that 10-year period.

“On the one hand we didn’t create many jobs, but people who didn’t get a job started their own businesses. I don’t see that as necessarily negative,” he said.

Elrich’s fellow council member and opponent in the county executive race, independent Nancy Floreen, said the purpose of the Empower Montgomery report was to acknowledge the fact that businesses play in role in the county’s future, but that she was not troubled by the numbers.

“I don’t have an opinion about those statistics. They come from valid sources, and I cannot say how they were presented, but I do trust what we’re seeing locally in terms of the information,” she said.

Floreen said she was pleased with the more recent MCEDC report because it makes the point that the county is a “great place to invest.”

“This is the sort of news that we need to share countywide as a place we need to be,” she said.

The Republican running in the county executive race, attorney and real estate broker Robin Ficker, said the MCEDC report paints a dramatically different picture than the Empower Montgomery Report, and that the timing of the newer report is suspect.

“Someone is trying to embellish the Montgomery County jobs picture a month before the election,” he said.

When told that the release of the report coincided with the end of the fiscal year, he replied that he “didn’t think anything is coincidental,” and that the report was meant to aid his two opponents, as well as help MCEDC staff “save their own jobs.”

Ficker said his main concern is that the county hasn’t done enough to convince Amazon to build its second headquarters in the county, which was one of the goals outlined in the Empower Montgomery report.

“The big kahuna is Amazon, and I don’t think Amazon’s going to locate here unless we have a business-friendly environment,” he said.

Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@bethesdamagazine.com