The Crier

What Google + Pfizer Mean(t) to Ann Arbor, part 3

Pfizer’s charitable contributions to Washtenaw County will be greatly missed, even though Google is already taking steps to fill their shoes

Andy Kroll · The Exchange · Nov 07, 2007

One area rarely mentioned in early Pfizer and Google reports – yet critical to the discussion of the aggregate result of the Pfizer and Google moves – is the resulting impact on local non-profit organizations and the volunteer community. Pfizer, as a company, was an active corporate partner and one of the biggest donors in the Ann Arbor community.

It sponsored many local organizations and events, including Ann Arbor Summerfest, Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Michigan Theater and the University Musical Society. The pharmaceutical company is also a major partner with Ann Arbor Spark, a not-for-profit economic development organization.
David Canter, Pfizer’s senior vice president and director of Michigan laboratories, sits on Spark’s board of directors alongside Michael Finney and other prominent local figures like University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman and Domino’s CEO David Brandon, a former University Regent.

In addition to the company’s significant financial support, Pfizer’s employees contributed a substantial amount of volunteer hours in the community. Losing this volunteer manpower is something Finney laments just as much as the loss of Pfizer’s charitable contributions. “Their staff, the Pfizer colleagues, committed thousands of volunteer hours on an annual basis,” he stated, “and now we’re going to lose these people and all of the time that they committed throughout our community.”

It’s a bit too early to tell how involved Google intends to be in Ann Arbor’s non-profit sector.

It’s a bit too early to tell how involved Google intends to be in Ann Arbor’s non-profit sector. Jenn Cornell, Google’s publicist, said in an e-mail that with the company relatively new to the city “a lot of work is being done to get the office started up, like hiring and training.” With that in mind, Cornell said Google is already partnered with Ann Arbor Summerfest as a “Media Support” sponsor for the festival.
She added that Ann Arbor Googlers have also created Google Cares, a volunteering and fundraising initiative whose goal each month is to select a non-profit organization to support with both volunteer work and “Donate-A-Dollar” campaigns. Cornell described Google Cares as an effort that “encourages volunteering and provides a forum for Googlers to organize volunteering activities.”

With these areas in mind, now it is up to citizens, experts, students and professionals to participate in ensuring the future success and stability of Washtenaw County’s economy. On one hand, this can be done by working to fill the void left behind by Pfizer with new businesses, whether they’re start-ups or established companies. At the same time, the city must make it a top priority to support and cultivate its new relationship with Google with the hopes that the company might consider bringing more of its operations to Ann Arbor. Both of these tasks are vital to the economic strength of the city, and both are very much the focus of area economic and political leaders, including Finney and his colleagues at Spark.

“With respect to Pfizer [leaving], and the three to five-year time frame for recovery, we think that things will start to happen,” Finney explained. “Some will happen this year, and we think they will all be knowledge-based job opportunities.” Finney stressed the importance of what he described as “repopulating” Pfizer’s facility once the company has completely left, although finding new companies for the 2-million-square-foot facility will be a lengthy process, mostly due to the high-tech, lab-based nature of the site.
With this in mind, Finney doubted whether another high-profile, Pfizer-sized business would come in and make use of the entire facility. “You’ll see that site repopulated with multiple users, and they may come from different industry sectors,” he explained. “It could be engineering firms, it could be other IT and software firms.” Still, Finney is confident in his city’s ability to attract businesses to fill that void. “We will slowly backfill so that we actually get to and go beyond what Pfizer represented to our community,” he said.

Ultimately, smaller businesses operating in Washtenaw County will go a long way toward diversifying the local economy, and filling the gap left behind by Pfizer.

Interestingly, if Finney and the city as a whole can successfully replace Pfizer’s facility not with another massive global corporation but rather with numerous different businesses from various industries, the end result will be a more stable and sustainable local economy — much more so than one that relied upon a large single entity like Pfizer for jobs and tax revenue.
This isn’t to say that the city would turn away future high-profile companies if they expressed interest in Washtenaw County, but by eliminating the dependence on a few major companies and instead diversifying with smaller businesses, the economy of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County will actually be better off.
It’s critical, Finney said, to “make sure that we’re going after and cultivating an entrepreneurial environment that creates 30, 40, 50, or 100 little start-ups on an annual basis because that’s going to provide the long-term sustainability and growth that we’re looking for.”

Ultimately, smaller businesses operating in Washtenaw County will go a long way toward filling the gap left behind by Pfizer, and diversifying the local economy. And it is this diversification that will maintain Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County’s status of one of the most prosperous regions in the nation.