At the Greater Des Moines Partnership’s Regional Summit last week, regional economic expert James Chung shared an assessment of Central Iowa’s ability to compete with other metros for businesses and workers. The event was held Sept. 17 in downtown Des Moines.
Chung shared more than 100 slides of data on Central Iowa and how it’s performing in terms of creating a community that workers and businesses want to call home. He said some of Des Moines’ performance measures are slipping and it’s time for leaders to ask difficult questions about the future.
When asked what Central Iowa should do if a major business like Wells Fargo moves to another state, he said the business community should be prepared for such a change. He said Des Moines took a hit at a deeper rate than other cities during recent recessions because the dip in mortgage lending hurt larger companies like Wells Fargo.
“There’s actually a mathematical correlation between new home starts and mortgage rates of the Des Moines economy, in part because that impacts most cities, but it’s further amplified because of Wells Fargo,” he said.
He said reinvention is important.
“The big question is whether Des Moines can reinvent itself beyond what the big companies are doing,” Chung said. “And two, can Des Moines reinvent itself technologically? For those industries that are going to eat jobs [by replacing positions with artificial intelligence], can a lot of that be driven by Des Moines teams here? Can a lot be driven by Des Moines ventures that are serving those companies? Those are the discussions I want to see happening.”
If a large employer decides to relocate out of Central Iowa, local leaders need to be ready to keep those workers here, he said.
“Start thinking about ways where, if that talent wants to stay in Des Moines, how it can redeploy in Des Moines in better ways,” he said. “Which is why I would love Des Moines to be thinking about the questions you can’t really ask publicly about what happens if these things shift with the major employers? How do we keep that talent? What kind of businesses grow up in response to that kind of workforce springing up, where all of a sudden you’ve got this talent who can be redeployed with knowledge to do the next big thing in that category? How do you pull together the teams who can start thinking about, what is that, and create the foundation of a universe of ventures that can arise,” Chung said.
Because of its strong financial sector, Des Moines has institutional knowledge of the mortgage industry. It would be wise to seize opportunities in that industry, he said.
“I hope there’s a team in Des Moines trying to reinvent what is the future of home mortgages. There’s been world-class talent who’s either lived and worked and resided here or has good knowledge of Des Moines,” he said. “I hope that there’s some shadow team that’s trying to figure out how to reinvent that. Given how large it is – it’s a $1 trillion mortgage industry – that could be the next giant blockbuster headquarters in Des Moines. If I heard that [a new mortgage company was coming to Des Moines or if there was investment in mortgage startups], I’d be happy to have angel investment in that one.”