MAYOR TACKLES ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

the direction of City Administrator Kerrith Fiddler and Mayor Reeves to assist in developing and implementing the city's existing and future economic development initiatives. She will also serve as a liaison to public and private agencies involved in economic development while marketing the city to businesses and contacting prospective companies and agencies.

In Santa Rosa County, her work tended to pertain to larger, more industrial-toned projects. She'll continue to work on such projects, but the new economic development director also knows that Pensacola has its own unique needs.

"The city is different," Grancognolo said. "My goal is going to be a little bit different than the priority of FloridaWest, which works with industrial parks, creating high-wage jobs and bringing infrastructure to industrial parks. The city of Pensacola has needs that are a little bit different than that."

For instance, Grancognolo said, the city will likely be focused on avenues more suited for an urban environment, such as attracting low-impact tech companies and remote workers to the area.

"Economic development can be a lot of different things," she said. "I think the key is recognizing what economic development looks like for your community and strategically working towards those goals and those efforts."

COURTER & CONDUIT

Mayor Reeves envisions the city's economic development efforts as a multi-pronged approach.

"As we constructed it, this position really focuses on two things," Reeves said. First, the economic development director will be attracting new businesses to the area, ones uniquely suited for the city. Second, the director will do what the mayor has described as "getting things across the finish line."

scribed it, as a "conduit" of sorts, facilitating community networking necessary to bring new businesses to the area. "Whether it's in terms of funding, whether it's in terms of bringing the right minds and organizations to the table to work towards solutions, whatever that looks like, that's what I'll be doing each day."

The city-centric angle to economic development from a city-centric angle will benefit Pensacola. Mayor Reeves said, "Having someone waking up every day looking at those issues and getting on top of those issues, I think, will be really valuable for us."

Selling A Sense Of Place

The business of modern economic development goes beyond the traditional work of attracting businesses to an area. It's a different world, a different game, with different rules.

These days, businesses place a lot of emphasis on an area's so-called "sense of place." Will it be a good place for their employees to live? This factor becomes all the more critical in attracting remote workers who are not geographically tethered.

"Especially if we're looking potentially at attracting tech jobs," Grancognolo said.

But what exactly is this nearly intangible sense of place? What are prospective businesses or workers looking for?

"They look for things like lower crime rate, access to public transportation; they look for a sense of community," she explained. "These younger generations are interested in quality of place. They think, 'Where do I want to live? Where am I gonna thrive?' And they move to those places."

Mayor Reeves is familiar with this philosophy, as are his counterparts in other communities.

dedicated economic development director to focus on needs unique to Pensacola.

"Is there opportunity for the city to play a bigger role in how we do economic development in our community? Absolutely," Mayor Reeves said.

Shortly before the Pensacola City Council approved Erica Grancagnolo as the city's new director of economic and neighborhood development on Thursday, Feb. 9, the mayor explained that the city would continue to work on collaborative regional efforts with FloridaWest and other entities, but he feels Pensacola now demands a dedicated person to focus on cityspecific economic development needs.

"I really look at Pensacola and how we've evolved, that in economic development, we have specific needs," Mayor Reeves said. "And we can be part of a lot of different solutions in economic development as a city, but we also have some much more narrow-focused things that we could work on."

The morning after Grancagnolo was confirmed by the city council as Pensacola's new economic development director, she wasted no time in getting to work, beginning her day with a trip to the Port of Pensacola to get an overview of its operations.

"I'm off to a running start this morning," she said. "I'm jumping right in. I'm just trying to, I think, match the energy level of the mayor."

Grancagnolo is fresh from her position as assistant airport manager and air service development manager at the Pensacola International Airport. From 2019-2022, she served as Santa Rosa County's assistant director of economic development, where she was responsible for all activities related to business attraction and incentives, business retention and expansion, marketing, workforce development, and program and project management.

As the economic and neighborhood development director, Grancagnolo will work under

"What I hope is, when you knock on Pensacola's door, what you hear is, 'Hey, thank you for considering Pensacola, Florida. Let us help you get this across the finish line,'" Reeves said. "Let us be that red phone to you, to see a project through, to see a relocation through."

"That is the new battlefront," the mayor said. "Other cities in the community, other mayors I'm speaking with right now, they are in that game and they understand, just how many white-collar jobs are remote, that people can live wherever they want."

"It is sense of place," Reeves continued. "It is bikeability, walkability, because when you're in the talent attraction business, what are you selling? Why move to Pensacola instead of Charleston? Why move to Pensacola instead of Dallas? Instead of Savannah? That's where we do have to set ourselves apart."

Grancognolo is in sync with this thinking. "Sometimes you have some really great ideas and some really great developers that are looking to invest in the community, and sometimes they may get caught up or turned off by the complexity with the permitting system. Sometimes all that's needed is just somebody to provide some assistance through that process."

She also sees her job, as Reeves has de -

Considering her own economic development philosophy, the city's new economic development director laid out some basic guiding principles that seem to align with both bolstering the local economy and also building this sense of place necessary to keep the momentum humming.

"Economic developers want to make sure that we have high-wage jobs. Families can move here. Their kids can go to school here, graduate from college and don't have to leave," Grancognolo said. "Families want to make sure that when their kids finish school, they can set down roots here; they don't have to move away for those high-wage jobs." {in}