A group of about 20 business owners delivered a message to Montgomery County’s chief economic development agency during a meeting Wednesday morning: the county must rebrand itself as a destination for tech companies rather than government employees and contractors.
The meeting was the first of several planned discussions between the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee of the County Council and the Montgomery County Economic Development Corpo., which was formed in 2015 as a public-private partnership in place of the county’s Department of Economic Development.
Committee chairman Hans Riemer said he plans to convene the meetings at least quarterly, or even once per month, to “hear what the business community has to say about the county’s progress.”
Montgomery has long battled a perception that it has an anti-business climate, which has been exacerbated recently by a series of reports that show Montgomery is falling behind its counterparts in Northern Virginia, which recently landed one of Amazon’s highly-coveted headquarters locations. The online retailer is expected to bring in 25,000 jobs over the course of 10 years.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Dan Schere over at Bethesda Beat Magazine