Broomfield Chamber launching new economic development entity

BROOMFIELD – The Broomfield Chamber next week will officially launch a new economic development arm that seeks to leverage the resources of local private businesses.

The new organization is called Access Broomfield Economic Coalition, or ABEC. The chamber hired economic development veteran Christian Booty to spearhead the effort. But the new entity will be investor-driven, with top sponsoring companies holding seats on the board that will steer the ABEC’s direction.

Investing companies so far include Blue Federal Credit Union, Hunter Douglas, BSC Signs and Wiens Real Estate Ventures.

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The ABEC will hold a launch event at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Omni Interlocken Hotel, 500 Interlocken Blvd., in Broomfield where guest speakers will include Broomfield mayor Randy Ahrens and Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. CEO Tom Clark, among others. Online registration is required.

Booty most recently worked in business development in the United Kingdom but prior to that worked eight years for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, a group similar to the state of Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade.  He also worked for a regional economic development group before joining the state.

The ABEC’s vision is still being refined, but its website states a variety of objectives on its website, including fostering a strong business climate in the community, business retention and expansion, industry cluster development, entrepreneurship, marketing the region, and site selection.

Given that the city of Broomfield has its own economic development arm that works to attract companies to the community, Booty said the ABEC’s primary focus early will likely be on business retention and expansion, as well as on attracting work force talent to the community.

“New projects are very sexy and take the headlines,” said Booty, noting Ikea’s recently announced plans for a new store in Broomfield as an example. “But you can do a lot of work with existing companies.

“It isn’t that they’re not doing that,” he added of the city’s efforts. “It’s just that we have a multiplier effect among chamber members.”

Booty said the organization will have other educational programming and will likely get to the point of more active business attraction eventually, though the organization will also try not to overlap its services too much with the city.

If the objectives sound familiar, the ABEC’s aim is similar to what the now-defunct Northwest Denver Business Partnership had tried to achieve on a regional level. But that organization was never able to gain traction.

After the city decided to take its economic development in-house and cut funding to the NDBP’s predecessor, the Broomfield Economic Development Corp., the BEDC in early 2013 changed its name to the Northwest Denver Economic Development Partnership in hopes that a more regional approach to economic development would pay dividends for employers who weren’t concerned with municipal boundaries. That organization became the NDBP as it refined its focus and tried to create a brand for the northwest portion of the Denver metro area. But the group ultimately had trouble getting enough buy-in across the region and couldn’t raise the funding necessary to keep the venture going, shutting down in late 2014.

“It kind of reinforced to me that we were on the right track a couple of years ago,” Mike Cienen, vice president of quality assurance at Hunter Douglas, said Friday of the Broomfield Chamber’s new initiative.

Cienen and John Dobie of BSC Signs were past board members of the NDBP. Both said they believe the ABEC will be able to capitalize on the Broomfield Chamber’s built-in constituency of roughly 500 members early on in a way that the NDBP was never able to do.

“We’re going to be able to promote the new economic development arm of the chamber better,” Dobie said.

Cienen added: “The difference is that this is Broomfield-focused. The prior group was working on a wider perspective and scope and it was too difficult to pull off at that time.”

Booty said sponsorship levels haven’t yet been made public for the ABEC but will be by Wednesday. He said the group’s objectives and budget will be dictated by how much can be raised.

“The more investors we bring in the more we can do,” Booty said.

Booty said the uniqueness of the chamber’s organization versus the city’s economic development efforts is that government entities often have different factors steering their objectives, such as land development and political issues. And there’s always greater acclaim for the municipalities in attracting new businesses rather than growing companies in place.

“That whole private side allows us to do that,” Booty said. “It’s sort of driven by industry as opposed to driven by politics.”