"I expect that businesses will find SF Prospector an invaluable tool in assessing relocation and expansion options. This truly is a resource for sophisticated business planning." - San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr.
The City & County of San Francisco launched a new program targeted at business attraction, retention and expansion using the Internet in 2002. The site is called SF Prospector.
San Francisco Prospector assists businesses wanting to move to San Francisco or expand within the City search for vacant commercial properties, create demographic analysis and generate site-specific business cluster reports based on user-defined selections.
Through the San Francisco website prospective businesses from around the world can search for available commercial properties or developable land. SF Prospector provides user-defined and site-specific demographic, business data reports and business cluster analysis. The interactive mapping interface allows the web site visitors to view incentive areas (Enterprise Zone, Federal Renewal Community, and Redevelopment Project Areas), aerial photos, public parking, neighborhoods, parks, schools, public transit and traffic counts can be viewed on the map. Property data is updated in real-time through a web interface. Users can perform micro analysis of demographics and businesses by ZIP, Supervisor District, Redevelopment Area and Neighborhood.
The program is a partnership between the City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and real estate professionals.
All property data is updated in real-time through an easy to use web browser interface.
Through the Internet, the City and County of San Francisco is able to provide economic development information related to business attraction and site selection 24 hours a day throughout the world.
The web site provides the following primary features:
- Search for vacant building space or developable land
- Generate site-specific demographic, consumer expenditure and workforce reports
- View business clusters for competition and synergy analysis
- Web site Visitor-controlled interactive maps
- Printable Marketing Reports
- Aerial Photography
- Real-time property listings
Go to Figure 1
Using the Web Site
San Francisco’s business attraction and site selection program is accessed at http://www.sfprospector.com and through the City and County of San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Economic Development web page (http://sfgov.org/moed). Through the Internet, prospective businesses can choose any square foot/acre range for commercial buildings or undeveloped land for their businesses. The web site program will search the City’s database of properties and return a list of all sites meeting the user-inputted criteria. These locations are shown on the map and identified with a corresponding number. The users can then select the properties that they are interested in, and the computer will bring up a detailed property summary report including real estate leasing contact information.
Go to Figure 2
The property report has two other file tabs adjacent to it. After the user identifies a building or address within the City, by clicking on the “Demographics” file tab he or she can generate a demographic analysis of the surrounding area based on a user-imputed radius of any size. The GIS application then calculates and summarizes the unique Census block group data and returns a report to the user. This query can bring back demographic information such as population, age breakdowns, housing characteristics, consumer spending, occupation and educational attainment.
Go to Figure 3
By clicking on the “Businesses” file tab the user will be able to view a color-coded map showing surrounding businesses by industry. Each of the industries is a link to a detailed list of all businesses in this category. This provides the business the ability to analyze the surrounding businesses for their competition or synergistic benefits.
Go to Figure 4
The database of available buildings is updated on-line and in real-time by real estate owners, leasing agents, and brokers who do business in the City and County of San Francisco through an extremely user-friendly Web page. This provides the business users looking for space access to a robust database of available buildings or developable land. This information is immediately updated and accessible the moment a real estate broker adds or deletes his or her property. San Francisco Staff also have complete control of and access to all information in the application’s database.
Effect of the program
The City of San Francisco, along with other Bay Area communities, experienced a tremendous economic vitality in the lat 1990s through the Spring of 2000 primarily fostered by high-technology and the emergence of “dotcom” companies wanting to locate at the geographic epicenter of the New Economy.
San Francisco in general and the Multimedia Gulch neighborhood in particular quickly became locations that businesses were flocking to. Office and commercial properties were difficult to find even at expensive lease rates and vacancy rates dropped to 1% during the peak of the economic boom.
The real estate community responded by building millions of square feet of new commercial buildings to accommodate this unprecedented demand for building space.
The dotcom/Internet bubble burst in early 2000 resulting in numerous businesses closing and jobs lost. The once small commercial vacancy rate of 1% in 2000 exploded to about 24% in 2002. In areas such as the high-tech famous South of Market vacancy rates were as high as 50%.
While the City of San Francisco had to do very little to attract hundreds of new and expanding businesses during the high tech economic boom the situation has changed and the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development has responded to the new circumstances.
Prior to the downturn, the City’s economic development strategy was primarily “bricks and sticks” and workforce development-focused. Post downturn the City has refocused and renewed its economic development strategy toward actively and aggressively pursuing expanding and relocating businesses.
The City has made a commitment to fostering enhanced economic development by providing enhanced economic development services to meet this goal and a main element of this strategy is the use of the Internet. SF Prospector is a realization of this programmatic policy focus.
Through SF Prospector the City is able to effectively and efficiently communicate economic opportunities to a variety of businesses of all types and sizes. Because the website is completely dynamic it allows the user to customize the information, analysis and reports to his or her specific needs. This can accommodate businesses of any industry and small start-ups to huge corporations. By providing user-specific data and analysis the City can respond to a variety of types of industries which can help foster greater diversification of the City’s economy.
As new businesses are able to identify economic opportunities through SF Prospector and relocate and/or expand with the City the businesses will bring in new tax revenues to the City, jobs to residents and expanded services to existing businesses and citizens.
SF Prospector is an online one-stop-shop that can take a prospective business through the both the stages of initial analysis and site selection in one place.
The SF Prospector program’s focus is targeted toward increasing employment, expansion of the local tax base and diversification of the area’s economy through filling vacant properties and increasing community services.
Why the Internet
Traditional marketing such as brochures, advertisements, CD ROMs and direct mail are all substantially expensive, are often ignored and become quickly outdated. In contrast, Internet marketing is relatively affordable, constantly used by businesses and is easy to keep current.
SF Prospector is a move away from less effective traditional economic development marketing programs and a move toward marketing that focuses on responsive communication.
Unlike traditional sales related marketing that focuses the message in one direction – from the economic developer to the prospect – SF Prospector opens communication so that the City, through SF Prospector, can immediately communicate back to the business prospect the information he or she needs immediately. SF Prospect users can send information requests through the Internet related to available properties, demographic and workforce data, business locations and clusters, locations of transportation, parking, incentives and volumes of other data which is returned to the user in seconds. This is real time economic development.
On the homepage of SF Prospector it reads that “San Francisco is committed to making "doing business" as easy as possible.” SF Prospector is innovative because it enhances the “brand” of San Francisco as a city that is good for business by providing business-friendly services. SF Prospector, along with SF Biz Info and other new programs are a realization of the City’s commitment to this goal.
The information provided on SF Prospector is a combination of data that comes from national data and primary data provided by the City of San Francisco. Through the Internet the City is able to centralize the data into SF Prospector and decentralize access to the data to anyone with an Internet connection. The information is completely free from cost to the end user and provides extensive data that would have previously cost a business thousands of dollars to access. Through SF Prospector small and medium sized businesses are now able to access the same powerful data and analysis that only large corporations had the budget to develop.
Although other communities have implemented web-based GIS (geographic information system) applications for business attraction and site selection, none have as extensive data as SF Prospector. It is the first web-based GIS application to include user-defined interactive information for public parking, neighborhoods, ZIP codes, Supervisor Districts, public parks, schools and public transit. Users can link out to detailed site-specific information for an Enterprise Zone, Federal Renewal Community, Redevelopment Project Area and Zoning.
Go to Figure 5
San Francisco has also innovated by being the first city in the nation that provides user-defined dynamic micro-analysis of businesses and demographics by ZIP Code, supervisor district, neighborhood, and Redevelopment Project Area. This allows users to select specific geographic locations and generate demographic and business reports unique to those locations.
Could it be replicated in other communities?
The SF Prospector application technology is completely replicable in any city.
What would vary by location is the type of data that is maintained by the City or County. Differing jurisdictions have a variety of types and quality of data.
Although many economic developers may not be familiar with geographic information systems (GIS), the GIS data is frequently available in other departments such as Planning or Public Works. These departments have often invested millions of dollars into the development of this data which other agencies such as economic development can now leverage for their unique needs.
No community would be limited from having a similar type of application even if it had no GIS data at all. With the widespread availability and affordability of off-the-shelf GIS data a similar system could be developed anywhere in the United States.
Advantages
The SF Prospector program presents an online model for economic development services which can be a standard tool for all economic development agencies. In addition to the transferability of the application to any other city’s economic development efforts, SF Prospector provides other important contributions that impact the field of economic development.
Before implementing SF Prospector property, demographic and business analysis information was difficult to access and frequently resulted in a lengthy and incomplete research. This was both inefficient and an ineffective means of serving businesses and encouraging investment in depressed economic areas. By centralizing information and decentralizing information access through the Internet the process of business attraction and site selection is speeded up and simplified. It is an objective of the program to facilitate the revitalization of economically depressed neighborhoods as well as provide quality jobs for local residents. In the information economy data, information and knowledge are key elements of business success.
Real Time Information:
SF Prospector is publicly available through the Internet at all times, the information is in the hands of the businesses and decision-makers on demand in real-time. The result of people accessing and benefiting from available data is that it leads to more informed business decisions.
Leveling the Information Field
Due to a lack of resources and information small to medium size enterprises are often at an economic information disadvantage. SF Prospector expands access to valuable demographic and business information in a system format that a layperson can easily gather and understand. This information that would have previously required thousands of dollars and weeks to gather can now be provided in minutes at no cost. This assists the small businesses to identify geographic and market opportunities for success.
Impartiality
Before implementing SF Prospector the City was often in an awkward position when a prospective business would call looking for available properties. Which real estate agent should they direct them to? With SF Prospector it allows City Staff to remain impartial in the search process and direct prospects to the website and to brokers that have properties that exactly match the user’s needs. This allows staff the ability to not-favor one brokerage company and creates an even paying field.
Data Access for Local Businesses.
Although SF Prospector is primarily focused on providing site selection services for the recruitment of new and expanding businesses, the application is a powerful tool to businesses which are already located in San Francisco. By using the demographic and business report generator these businesses can better understand the market context within which they operate as it relates to population, income and consumer characteristics.
Resource Savings
Automating many of the site-selection assistance requests frees up City Staff time which was previously used for the time-intensive task of site-availability research.
User Defined
No one knows the information a business needs better than that business itself. By providing a complete dynamic and user-defined program the businesses can navigate to the specific information it needs.
Equal Access
This goal was met by providing a public economic information portal that is accessible at no cost to users. Expanding information access and delivery empowers small and medium sized enterprises that might not typically have access to this level of quality information due to cost constraints. Information is presented in a straight-forward format that is easy to gather and understand.
Impartiality
SFProspector is equally accessible to any and all of the real estate professionals working in San Francisco. The City is no longer in a position where there could be a perception they were favoring one real estate company or brokerage firm over another.
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