Tim Kanavel. Photo by Kyle Norby

Tim Kanavel has lived in Arizona 35 years and has worked for Pinal County for a decade. He is the first and, so far, only head of the county’s Economic Development program. This year, as the county has continued to grow commercially and residentially, workforce development was welded to economic development under his care.

He sat down with InMaricopa to talk about the booms and busts.

What is your background?
I’ve been in Pinal County a little over 10 years. I’ve been the economic development manager since then. I’m originally from Ohio and I got tired of the mud and cold and decided I’d come to a place where we didn’t have cold and mud all the time.

Describe the differences between what was happening here when you first came and what’s happening now.
When I first came here in the fall of 2009, our unemployment rate was 13.2%. Things were bleak. It really wasn’t a very attractive place to be. We had a lot of people that were abandoning their homes. It just wasn’t getting any better for some time, probably until about 2012.

When we first started, it was probably the lowest this county’s ever been financially. Morale was very low. We had a problem with one of our officials here at the county that was in trouble. [Then-county manager Stanley Griffis was incarcerated for embezzling over $600,000, much of which was for road improvements.] We’re still trying to get over that even to this day.

Then things started picking up a little bit. And then in 2012 we had a big election, and we went from three supervisors to five supervisors. That made all the difference for the entire world for the county. From that point on, from Jan. 1, 2013, until now, we’ve been able to get announced and bring in nearly $8 billion worth of economic development projects.

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TIM KANAVEL
Title
: Pinal County Economic & Workforce Development director
Age: 63
Residence: Florence
Family: 3 children, 4 grandchildren
Education: Bachelor of Arts in regional development from University of Arizona, associate degrees from Pima Community College
Hometown: Frazeysburg, Ohio
Previous work: Sun Corridor, Arizona Commerce Department, Wickenburg Regional Economic Development Partnership
Worst-kept secret: Two-time recipient of Economic Development Distinguished by Excellence (EDDE) Award[/quote_box_right]What is the county’s top selling point when you’re trying to bring people in?
For us, it’s location. Location, location, location – I know everybody’s heard it a thousand times, but we are situated between the two largest metro areas in the entire state.

What are you fighting? What are your greatest difficulties?
One of the biggest issues we have to deal with almost on a daily basis is perception of the county. Perception is reality. We’ve been a mining and ag business county for a hundred-and-some years. Then all the sudden now we’re making our mark in the big industry, high-tech and things like that, and people are not quite ready in the state for that. We used to be the big void between Tucson and Phoenix. Now we’re competing with both counties for big projects. We’re actually winning a lot of those big projects.

Is there enough infrastructure in place and are there plans for more infrastructure that will handle what you want to do?
We’re probably considered adequate. But we’re always building. We’re always talking about building on the East-West Corridor. As we build more roads and more roads, we’re talking about that North-South Freeway. There’s lots of things we have access to we don’t even pay for. We have three major, international airports right on both sides of us that we have easy access to. But another thing that we’re putting in is a tremendous amount of solar and alternative energy. We’ve already got one biomass plant open at Stanfield. We’ve got nearly 6,000 acres right now of solar. Plus, we also have the ethanol plant over near Maricopa. We’re working with some international companies right now that are working with projects here, so we’re competing at a global level, not just necessarily national or regional level.

How do you reassure them about the water supply given that you’ve got an official government document saying there will be a water shortage?
That’s coming. We’ve got a water board that we’re working with. I know Supervisor [Steve] Miller is the chairman of it. They’re the ones that will be setting the stage where we have something in writing. However, one of the things we do at the county, we don’t go after companies that are big water-users. Nikola Motors is not a big water-user, neither is Lucid Motors.

Outside the county, what do people tell you is their first thought, top-of-mind, about Pinal County?
Workforce. Usually workforce development is absolutely No. 1. That is the reason we merged economic development with workforce. It’s just a natural flow. They had to get started because we used to be tied with Gila County – it was the Gila County-Pinal County Workforce Board. We split with them about four years ago and created our own. It’s taken us this long to get in shape.

The last thing residents want to see is a development that gets half built and then just sits there.  
It’s very, very difficult to do that. Both the projects I know you’re talking about, the Dreamport Villages and also Phoenix Mart. We lower our risk as much as we can. There’s always a risk. A lot of these companies, for whatever reason, they thought they had the funding, the funding goes away, national issues happen and things crash. None of these people do this and think they’re going to fail. Like with Phoenix Mart, something happened with EB-5 visa programs and stuff like that, they were not prepared for. All the sudden this thing takes their entire game plan away. Now they’re stuck with a building, and now they can’t do anything with it for a while. Now, that project is not dead; it’s still going forward, as Dreamport Villages is.

In the next five years, ideally, what would you like to see happen?
For one thing, these projects we’re working on get completed. One will be announced [in March], It’ll take probably two years to complete. I would like to see the Phoenix Mart come to fruition, also Dreamport Villages. Those are billion-dollar companies. I also want to see our tourism program we just now got started. We’re putting together an incredible portfolio of photos. I mean we’re taking hundreds and hundreds of photos. That’s something we’re going to be broadcasting on the website and our social media. So, that’s something to be looking forward to in the next five years.


This story appears in the April issue of InMaricopa.