Jump-starting jobs? Think local, retrain

BYLINE: Aldo Svaldi Denver Post Staff Writer

Pueblo - Educating and retraining workers, incubating new local business and repealing a tax on manufactured aircraft.

Members of the Economic Development Council of Colorado gathered here last week to discuss these and other key issues that will affect the state's leading industries in the coming year.

While Colorado supports alternative energy of all kinds - from fuel cells to wind turbines, solar panels to fuel-making algae - it must also find a way to fund public education and train the kinds of workers required to develop it.

Although Colorado's funding of grades K through 12 is about average among states, it ranks near the bottom on public funding for higher education, said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.

Pueblo officials are among those who have gotten creative about ways to provide the employees needed for growing companies.

"Our community college is willing to develop training programs for any company willing to relocate here," said Dan Centa, Pueblo's director of public works.

Colorado State University is also exploring ways to use its statewide Extension Office network to bring specialized job training to employers that need it, said Hunt Lambert, CSU's vice president of economic development.

In contrast, information-technology companies are worried about a shortage of students entering the field, said Su Hawk, president of the Colorado Software and Internet Association. They are worried that they will have to look for talent outside the state or possibly relocate.

Colorado has lost thousands of technology and telecom jobs since 2001, although that consolidation appears to be stabilizing.

Enrollments in technology programs are dropping, and schools are devoting less focus to the segment, Hawk said. At the same time, about half of all information-technology jobs are within companies in the booming aerospace and mining industries.

Colorado's strong support of the emerging alternative-energy industry has given it an early lead over other states, said Tom Plant, director of the Governor's Office of Energy Management and Conservation.

Its new law requires 20 percent of the state's power be generated from renewable sources by 2020. At the same time, the state is uniquely configured to provide wind power on the Eastern Plains, solar power in the sunny southern counties and geothermal energy along the entire Western Slope.

The Front Range also is home to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden and a pool of talented engineers and researchers.

Those facts weren't lost on the world's largest maker of wind turbines, Denmark-based Vestas, when it came time to build its first U.S. manufacturing plant.

"They chose Windsor for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its name," Plant said with a laugh. The $60 million facility could eventually employ 400.

Colorado has about 400 biosciences companies and adds 20 to 25 new ones each year, said Denise Brown, executive director of the Colorado BioSciences Association, 75 percent of which are homegrown, with many started by serial entrepreneurs.

Because it can take bioscience firms 10 to 15 years and $1 billion to $1.2 billion to bring their products to market, the industry is unlike others. Said Brown, "We need organized, formal incubators."

A company called Solix Biofuels is doing just that in Fort Collins. Its founders are working with CSU on technology that can produce large quantities of oil from algae and convert it into biodiesel fuel.

Rather than recruiting out-of-state bioscience firms that might pack up and leave if their products fail, it's more productive to nurture the entrepreneurs who are incubating their ideas in Colorado, said Sean Moriarty, president of Fort Collins-based QLT USA. "If they're growing a company here (and it fails), they'll stay and do something else."

Colorado also is a hub for aviation and aerospace, but it risks losing out on a key opportunity, said Travis Vallin, the state's aeronautics director. "We charge sales tax to any person who buys an aircraft built here."

The so-called "fly-away" tax, which New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma have repealed, leaves Colorado at a disadvantage for attracting aircraft manufacturers, Vallin said.

Vallin said he will work to repeal the tax next year, and will call on economic development officials for help.

Assistant Business Editor Linda Castrone contributed to this report.

Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.