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Calling upon the Board of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation to explore changing its name to the Philadelphia Economic Development Corporation.
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WHEREAS, The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC) is a private, not-for-profit Pennsylvania corporation, founded in 1958 by the City of Philadelphia and the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of Commerce to promote development throughout the city; and
WHEREAS, PIDC's central strategy is to leverage financing and real estate resources to retain and to grow employment in Philadelphia, with clients ranging from the traditional base of commercial and industrial businesses to the developers of large, public purpose facilities, in all neighborhoods of Philadelphia; and
WHEREAS, In its forty-five years of existence, PIDC's track record is very impressive -- 4,700 settled transactions (including $7 billion in financing, 1500 acres of land sales, 4 million square feet of leased space) have leveraged more than $10 billion in total project investment and have assisted in retaining and creating more than 390,000 jobs in Philadelphia; and
WHEREAS, Over those forty-five years, industrial jobs in Philadelphia have decreased dramatically while hospitality, education, information, and service industry jobs have all increased significantly; and
WHEREAS, PIDC is now involved in much more than just industrial development, such as neighborhood revitalization, knowledge-based industry promotion, hospitality sector support, workforce development, and cost-effective government, with projects as diverse as the Naval Business Center, the new stadiums, the Kimmel Center, Penn's Landing, and the Byberry State Hospital site; and
WHEREAS, If PIDC were instead called the Philadelphia Economic Development Corporation, for marketing purposes it would be much more clear to outsiders potentially seeking to locate in Philadelphia that PIDC is the City's primary economic development agency for all businesses, and would further help shed Philadelphia's image as a city clinging to its industrial past; and
WHEREAS, The mechanism for changing the name of a nonprofit corporation is to simply change its registration with the Secretary of the Commonwealth, however, an "industrial development agency" is a term used and defined in several state statutes, and PIDC receives many significant and diverse funds from many sources, and a name change may have a significant effect on its many contracts; now therefore
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That Council call upon the Board of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation to explore changing its name to the Philadelphia Economic Development Corporation.
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