Phoenix unfurled its economic development branding over the Phoenix Biomedical Campus Tuesday morning.
Under an azure Phoenix sky, Community and Economic Development Director Christine Mackay and Deputy Director Nathan Wright grabbed onto the handrails and climbed 172 feet above the PBC campus to unfurl the 14-foot long “Phoenix is Bio” banner. The crane is at the Wexford Science + Technology building at Fifth and Garfield streets.
By Eric Jay Toll for PHXNewsroom
“I could so this all day,” said Mackay, while sitting at the controls of the 285,000 pound crane and rotating its boom 360-degrees over the PBC. “I count 12 cranes over downtown; 15 if Midtown is included.”
The banner is the first in a 2020 branding effort spreading the word about the more than $3 billion in bioscience healthcare capital facilities will develop in the city of Phoenix over the next 18 months. More than $1.3 billion of those facilities are currently under construction.
Bioscience healthcare organizations are looking to add more than 7,000 to the workforce once the facilities start coming online. In September, the first of those, Wexford Science+Technology’s 850 North Fifth laboratory, will open.
Also under construction are Creighton University Medical School, the Mayo-Arizona State University Health Solutions Campus, Banner-M.D. Anderson Phoenix Cancer Center and Dignity Banner Neurological Institute campus expansion.
CED also completed a 30-second video board commercial promoting the PHXCore that premieres next week on the Arizona Center board, Third and Van Buren streets.
“Phoenix is Hot” branding will also begin appearing on the fence scrims encircling Downtown construction sites. The first will be on the Hines Block 24 development at Fourth and Jefferson streets.
CED’s messaging is to promote the shift in Phoenix employment during the 20-teens from construction-real estate-and-retail to the four advanced industry sectors: bioscience healthcare, business and financial services, manufacturing and technology. As of November 2019, the Office of Economic Opportunity reported that in the Phoenix metro, advanced industries comprise more than 57 percent of the workforce, compared to 45 percent in 2007.
