Philippine city sees Reno as mirror image, hopes to replicate success

While staring at a wall that showed complicated math equations used by Reno programmers to create 3D trees in video games, a member of a traveling delegation from the Philippines decided to lighten up the mood by furrowing his brow and giving one of them a closer look.

"This is correct," he said, earning laughs from the rest of the group.

Call it the typical Filipino penchant for humor. For the delegation from the city of Balanga in the Philippines, however, the reason behind the visit to the Biggest Little City is a lot more serious.

The capital of the Philippine province known for being the site of the Bataan Death March in World War II, Balanga is primarily an agricultural city. For the city of more than 90,000 to thrive in the future, however, it has to plow a larger stake in the new economy, according to its leaders. This means nurturing a startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem that starts first and foremost with enhancing the city's university.

"The solution to most of our problems is education," said Joet Garcia, mayor of the city of Balanga. "There has to be an education component to all our programs in order to make them sustainable."

The desire to kickstart its new economy efforts led the mayor, city officials and some business people on a West Coast tour that includes stops at Silicon Valley. The delegation also added the Biggest Little City to the list, making stops at "university town" linchpin the University of Nevada, Reno as well as downtown districts such as Midtown and the Riverwalk's Starup Row.

Why include Reno in its innovation tour? Although Silicon Valley certainly is the standard when it comes to building a high-tech ecosystem, it's especially important for a city that's starting out like Balanga to learn from other areas that are making the transition from their legacy industries to a more diversified, entrepreneurship-based economy, Garcia said. For the city of Balanga, the Reno area serves as a more realistic blueprint to where it can be in the coming years than Silicon Valley.

"(Balanga is) about five years behind Reno in terms of integration (with the the university and entrepreneurs) and building their ecosystem," said Eric Madison, executive director of Reno-based startup accelerator and business incubator The CUBE @ Midtown. "We may still be in our infancy but other cities are already looking at us to see what we're doing right."

The Balanga delegation visit is just one of many international visits to the area over the past year, said Mike Kazmierski, president and CEO of the Economic Developmnent Authority of Western Nevada. With more visits from overseas expected in the coming months, Kazmierski says the interest in Reno shows how far the area has come since being mired in the last recession.

"These visits are important in showing that our international image is changing," Kazmierski said. "With our strong business and technology growth, the Tesla (gigafactory) and Switch announcements and our aggressive marketing and attraction efforts in the Bay Area, we are now on the radar for international business delegations as a place to check out in the U.S."

It certainly helps to have high-profile names such as Tesla, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon in the area. Learning how Reno managed to leverage its lower costs, business-friendly environment and location — including its proximity to California and other Western states — to attract such big names was of special interest to Garcia's group. One challenge for Balanga, for example, is attracting business and capital while competing with the more established hotbed of Manila as well as the emerging Subic Bay and Clark freeport zones nearby. Just like proximity to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley became an advantage for Reno, perhaps the fact that Balanga is close to the aforementioned areas could also work to its advantage, according to Garcia.

"Manila is still the center but … it's also more expensive and has issues like lots of traffic," Garcia said. "If we show our advantages, especially by being a university town and a good place to live, work and play, then we can become an alternative."

Before getting to that point, however, Garcia admits that it will be "a long, difficult process" with a lot more work needed to be done. This includes acquiring more funding and encouraging the city's businessmen to switch from being passive to more active investors in the city's new economy initiatives. Another is leveraging its university as a catalyst to form new startups and technology. The delegation's trip, for example, builds on a national innovation award won by Bataan Peninsula State University, which allowed the students involved to take part in a Silicon Valley exposure tour.

Although transforming Balanga into a knowledge-based business hub is a tall order, seeing Reno's success within the shadow of Silicon Valley makes Garcia hopeful. With Reno's return as a member of Sister Cities International, stronger ties with Balanga is also possible, said Councilman Oscar Delgado.

"It is no secret that we have a large and growing Filipino community in the Biggest Little City," Delgado said. "I believe that if we can establish a sister city partnership with Balangan, it will show how we are open to and wanting to learn from other cultures."