VP of research, Greater Houston Partnership

Patrick Jankowski has been with the Greater Houston Partnership—an organization that serves small to large businesses and the community—for nearly 30 years as a researcher. The origins of GHP can be traced back to the founding of Houston's first Chamber of Commerce in the 1840s when a group of businessmen came together to help the city recover from an outbreak of scarlet fever.

Jankowski, a former journalist, provides data to more than 2,000 members along with the general public. He also helps recruit businesses to the area, assist economic development, and lobby in Austin on behalf of the area for adequate funding and equitable policy.

The GHP aims to help businesses in the Houston area—defined as a 10-county region including Harris and Montgomery counties—thrive through consultations, workshops and preparing data to provide an accurate portrait of the region's economy.

What resources are available through GHP for businesses looking to relocate to Houston?

One of the things we're trying to do is make sure the economy continues to expand and grow. Our job is to try and bring companies and employees into [our] 10–county area. [We] actively go out and court site consultants, [and] we're always letting them know that whenever they have a prospect or client to make sure they look at Houston.

When a company starts looking, they have a number of issues they are trying to deal with. So we will work with them trying to provide them with the data [and] information. The company will usually be looking at about 20 different metropolitan areas. If we can get a company to come look at Houston, at least half the time they end up deciding on Houston.

What role does improved mobility and transportation play in competing in a global economy?

Mobility is a concern, and it is something that the region as a whole is working on and something that [GHP] is involved in. In the past, there has been a great deal of emphasis on expanding our freeway and roadway system. You can't simply build more roads to get yourself out of a situation. There's a whole package of what you need to do to increase mobility. One of the things is flex time—where you don't put everybody on the road to get to work at 8 a.m., but let [employees] come in between 7 and 9 a.m. or you let them work four days rather than five days. There's the idea of telecommuting. There's van-pooling and ride-sharing. The park and ride is a wonderful system. One thing that is great, which has occurred in this region over the last 30 years, is to hold a good paying, white-collar job you do not have to work downtown. That's something that deals with mobility—not trying to centralize all the jobs in one area.

When you're talking about economic trends, what indicators do you look at and watch closely?

There are probably about two dozen [indicators]. One of the best indicators out there is the purchasing managers index, or PMI. The PMI is put together by the Houston chapter of the Institute for Supply Management. They get on the phone or send forms out to different purchasing managers and ask questions. After crunching the numbers, they come up with a PMI that tells you what the economy is going to do over the next three or four months. If you plot the PMI over time, it mirrors so much of what we've seen over the last four or five years. It may not be fully scientific because it's simply calling [people] up and asking what's going on, but it's just been an incredible predictor of what goes on.

How will the opening of the ExxonMobil campus in Spring affect economic development in the surrounding areas?

For Houston as a whole, it is very beneficial. For that region, it's going to be incredible. It is an injection of capital, an injection of jobs and an injection of spending. All the areas surrounding that area—land values are going to go up. People are going to be wanting to put in office buildings and other things because Exxon's clients and customers are going to want to be close by and so they are going to be leasing space and buildings nearby. Employees are going to want to live as close as possible to where they work, and so you're going to see more houses built and sold in that area.

In general, we have lots of energy and energy service companies looking at Houston right now. It is kind of ironic that 25 years ago, we were concerned about energy. We thought it was a bad business to be in because it really hurt the economy, and 25 years later the energy industry really is what helped us recover. In the last two years, we've added close to 30,000 jobs. If you consider the oil and gas companies, the exploration companies, the manufacturers, the oil field service workers—the energy industry has such a high multiplier here it's really one of the things that has helped us recover faster than everybody else. Part of it is developing this shale exploration for gas and oil.

According to GHP research, about 40 percent of Magnolia residents commute to Houston for work. How do you think this trend may change in the next five years?

I can see Magnolia's population continue to grow maybe even at a faster rate than it's been growing because people are going to want to live there and commute to Exxon. They're not going to need to drive downtown. You may have people who are working at the Exxon facility in downtown Houston who are now going to be working at the facility north of Houston.

I can see them moving to an area like Magnolia because it's so nice. In Magnolia, you can buy a couple acres and have a couple horses in your backyard.