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VIEWPOINT

Green Corridor Partnership More Than Symbolic

February 2008

There was plenty of substance to go with the style when then-Mayor Nora Davis added the City of Emeryville’s name to the Green Corridor Partnership agreement.

The Green Corridor Partnership (see related article in this issue, on page 2) is an agreement among the cities of Oakland, Richmond, Berkeley, Emeryville, U.C. Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The signatories all pledged to coordinate a major new regional green job training and placement effort, hold an annual green economic summit, and set quarterly meetings of the directors of economic development, work force development, and technology-transfer offices.

Emeryville’s partnership in this historic agreement has both tangible as well as important symbolic implications.

Tangibly, this means jobs and new businesses locating here. Emeryville is already seeing the benefits of the emerging Green industry in this City. The new EmeryStation East building at 5885 Hollis Street houses Amyris, an exciting new company that is a leader in the fast-growing biofuels industry. It is also the headquarters for JBEI – the Joint Biofuels Energy Institute – that was the subject of the cover story of the November issue of The Emeryville Connection. JBEI’s presence alone puts Emeryville on the statewide and national map as a leading center for biofuels industry research.

Additionally, there are several very important symbolic implications of the Green Corridor Partnership.

First, it makes a clear statement that Emeryville can play with the much larger jurisdictions around us. This was evidenced by Emeryville finishing the in Final Four as the home of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. We might be small in size but we’re in the major leagues when it comes to political representation, civic and business leadership and advanced urban planning.

Second, the Green Corridor Partnership represents another huge step forward in changing Emeryville’s image from the old, gritty Rust Belt town of decades ago to the modern, cutting-edge City of the 21st Century. In recognition of the importance of the Green Corridor Partnership, the Emeryville Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors voted unanimously to endorse the Program and pledged to work closely with City officials and the private sector to support and advance the goals of the Partnership. The Chamber’s Healthy City Initiative Program contains an “Environmental Health” component to which support of the Green Corridor Partnership Program will now be added.

Years ago, labeling Emeryville a “Green” anything would have been unthinkable. Today the opposite is true – Emeryville is now a leader, and a recognized leader, in the “Green” movement, replete with green buildings, green jobs, green businesses, an active City environmental program and a Chamber of Commerce that is one of the most active promoters of the Bay Area Green Business Program and itself a Certified Bay Area Green Business. How times do change – and for the better.