City of San Leandro
Creating a Tech and Innovation Ecosystem
Nestled just miles from the burgeoning tech centers of Silicon Valley and San Francisco, San Leandro has demonstrated resiliency through several economic transitions during its 150 years. Its current transition to becoming a “smart city” combines the legacy – and real estate – of its industrial past with the technologies enabled by its fiber optic infrastructure.
Synopsis
(February 2013 - April 2018)
Client:
The initial position of Chief Innovation Officer was created and financed through a partnership between the City of San Leandro and local business owner, Patrick Kennedy.
Key Stakeholders:
City Councilmembers, Staff, and Community Members
San Leandro Chamber of Commerce & San Leandro Businesses, particularly in the City’s industrial area (advanced manufacturing, fabrication, industrial robotics, cloud media development, more)
Pat Kennedy, CEO / OSIsoft: City’s contractual partner in transforming San Leandro through creation of a 10 gigabits per second (gbps) fiber optic loop, Lit San Leandro, kicking off San Leandro’s digital and economic transformation.
OSIsoft, Inc. (now Aveva): Industrial Internet of Things software company that required a fast fiber optic connection to the internet or relocate to a new city.
U.S. Economic Development Agency (EDA): Co-funded expansion of City fiber optic conduit infrastructure with $2.1 million grant
Product:
Using Lit San Leandro’s high speed connections to the internet, accelerate San Leandro’s ability to attract new technology industries to San Leandro.
Lead contract development and City Council approval to connect all San Leandro Unified School District school sites and facilities to City-owned fiber optic strands.
Develop initiatives, particularly through public-private partnerships, to accomplish city economic development, technology, and innovation goals.
Advise and guide city staff and elected officials regarding the inclusion of “smart technology” goals and requirements in all economic development policy documents.
Create a tech and innovation ecosystem designed to support the City Council’s economic development and technology goals.
Role:
Spearhead, manage, and execute strategic economic development plan based on Lit San Leandro’s fast access to the internet
Manage the city’s relationship with its private partners; Dark Fiber, LLC, Lit San Leandro and public partners, including the EDA.
Represent the city in numerous (national and regional) speaking engagements
Act as first point of contact for external and internal inquiries related to technology, including; entrepreneurs; pilot projects; speaking engagements; and public-private partnerships (PPPs).
Develop and execute marketing strategies to maximize connection of San Leandro businesses to Lit San Leandro
Lead development of tech and education conferences in the city of San Leandro ex. “Prototyping the Future”; “HardwareCon”; “San Leandro Solar Week; “Make San Leandro”.
CREATING SAN LEANDRO’S TECH AND INNOVATION TRANSFORMATION
Like most Bay Area cities, San Leandro’s economic policies reflected a strong desire to attract new industries into San Leandro, particularly technology. From the early 2000’s, San Leandro’s General Plan continued to envision economic growth and jobs driven by technology, but the path forward remained murky.
That is until Patrick Kennedy, CEO of San Leandro’s largest technology company made a unique pitch to City staff and elected officials: you provide the conduit, I’ll run the fiber and create the business organization needed to manage and sell the fiber. The result was approval of a contract in December 2011 by the San Leandro City Council between the City and Dark Fiber LLC, to create what would become Lit San Leandro.
With internet speeds up to 10 gbps, or hundreds of times faster than most home internet speeds, fiber optics had the potential to dramatically change the the type of business and investors attracted to San Leandro. With San Leandro’s historical and continued pride in being a manufacturing city (“We Make Things””, sectors like dvanced manufacturing, robotics, virtual reality, green and clean tech, biotech, food tech would naturally be attracted to San Leandro’s relatively modern and safe industrial buildings.
How to market this new piece of digital public infrastructure?
The City formed a partnership with Dr. Patrick Kennedy, CEO of OSIsoft, to fund a new position, one inspired by San Francisco’s then-CIO Jay Nath: Chief Innovation Officer.
The City of San Leandro hired Chief Innovation Officer Deborah Acosta in 2013 to create economic opportunities enabled by the city’s new fiber optic network, Lit San Leandro. Acosta bears the distinction of being the first female municipal Chief Innovation Officer in the U.S (tied with Ashley Hand, who started the same day as Kansas City, MO’s new CIO!)., the SF Bay Area and San Leandro itself.
Under Acosta’s leadership, the City of San Leandro morphed from a city aspiring to participate in Silicon Valley tech and innovation opportunities to a city claiming its own space in advanced manufacturing, robotics, 3D printing, biotech and other industrial internet of things (IIoT) technologies.
The City of San Leandro is now recognized nationally as a City of Tech and Innovation, largely in part due to Acosta’s unique blend of community and project development, communication, collaborative, financial and technical skills.
Outcomes:
DEVELOPMENT OF SAN LEANDRO TECH AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEM based on City Council Goals:
City Fiscal Responsibility
Economic Resiliency and Becoming a Center for Innovation
Build Strong Connections Between City and Schools
Following key innovation verticals emerged and numerous public-private partnerships built to support City Council goals:
Broadband Infrastructure: Lit San Leandro
Education (Public-Private Collaborations: K-12, Local Community Colleges, Universities)
Energy: Distributed, Local, Resilient
Entrepreneurship / Civic Innovation: Empowering a diverse community and new generations to fuel San Leandro’s economic engine as entrepreneurs, business owners and intrapreneurs.
Industrial Internet of Things: We Make Things for new generations
Industrial Internet of Things: “We Make Things”
GATE510: Transformation of former Dodge Auto plant, originally encompassing over 800,000 sf of rentable office and industrial space, into today’s almost 1.5 million sf of office, R&D and manufacturing real estate.
Redevelopment of this site resulted in influx of high-growth tech companies escaping the cost of Class A San Francisco and Emeryville real estate.
The installation of Lit San Leandro and its fast internet access enabled a new, unique-to-the East-Bay leasing strategy for the owners of the struggling Center, WestGate owners , Scanlon, Kemper, Bard.
City Benefits: increased business tax base; transfer tax boost when real estate was sold to ShopCore Properties for $87 million in 2018; direct and indirect civic marketing benefits (“City of Innovation”); new event space in the newly developed Town Center; new “next generation” entrepreneurship and job opportunities for local residents.
Next Generation Workplace District Study: Delivered to the City Council in October 2013 with local media coverage focused on San Leandro’s growing economic opportunities in its industrial area. The study explored the City’s potential to incentivize the creation of modern, advanced manufacturing and technology workplaces that attract new generations of entrepreneurs and workers. Three primary strategies emerged:
Boost Value-Added Companies: “We Make Things”
Engage Existing Customers: “Make it worthwhile for your businesses to engage”
Humanize the Place: “With 21st century transformations in business and industry, workplace districts must now be tools to help attract, nurture and retain talent.”
Founder’s Circle: Created to serve as collaboration platform for San Leandro business leaders and the City to “create destination businesses in a destination city”. The Founder’s circle was intended to fulfill the 2nd primary City element in the Next Generation Workplace District Study, “Engage Existing Customers”.
SyncFab: As part of the Startup in Residence Program (see above), SyncFab and the City’s Innovation Office formed a collaboration that enabled this startup to expand its supply-chain software services to San Leandro’s industrial companies. Now a growing company, SyncFab offers manufacturing buyers and sellers “agile supply chain management and parts pedigree with digital thread compliance & blockchain cybersecurity” – and increased opportunities for San Leandro fabrication shops to compete for aerospace, mobility and medical supply contracts.
Energy: Managing San Leandro’s Energy Future
4,000 new LED street light bulbs are connected to each other and to a master control at City Hall through a low-frequency, wi-fi mesh network: smart lighting program wins Smart 50 Energy Award from Smart Cities Connect in February 2018.
Numerous Events held at Zero Net Energy Center showcasing solar technology innovation:
$1.5 million CEC grant to Olidata Smart Cities (renamed ZipPower, LLC) to prototype the scaling of distributed resource energy systems for communities. Grant co-applicants include City of San Leandro, OSIsoft, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, GELI. [see also ZipPower case study]
Acosta CIO Role:
Spearhead, manage, and execute strategic economic development plan based on Lit San Leandro’s fast access to the internet, as identified by Outcomes, including:
Identified the type of technologies best supported by San Leandro’s fiber-optic and advanced manufacturing infrastructure; worked to attract, expand, and retain targeted technology and innovation companies and investment, notably:
Type A Machines / Ivaldi Group (3D printer manufacturing and services)
SyncFab (End-to-End Supply Chain Traceability software secured by blockchain)
Urban Bloc (shipping container conversions to restaurants, breweries, coffee shops)
FreeWire Technologies (mobile and fixed EV charging)
Built connections among ecosystem stakeholders through activities that brought them together, including conferences, workshops, innovation fairs and other fun events [see ZipPower case study for details]
Created events in underutilized real estate to reimagine new uses and investment, including:
WestGate Shopping Center, rebranded as Gate510 (former Dodge/Chrysler auto plant)
Managed or participated in development and implementation of policies and contracts related to creation of a healthy and sustainable tech and innovation ecosystem, including:
San Leandro Fiber Optic Master Plan
Represented the City and the impacts of its digital transformation through numerous speaking engagements at local, regional and national conferences. [see ZipPower Case Study for details]
Building San Leandro’s Smart Ecosystem
Education: Leveraging Technology for the Next Generation
Make San Leandro– Celebration of East Bay Makers at the City’s 2014 annual Cherry Festival, bringing the joy of innovation and “making things” to new generations.
East Bay Manufacturing Day: High-School Students tour local, primarily advanced, manufacturing plants and explore community college support for career pathways in advanced manufacturing, robotics, etc.
Pilot City’s Derick Lee hosts Harvey Mudd College students in San Leandro for 12 weeks to develop Smart Garbage Can app on City’s new “smart city” platform.
Innovative Internships were launched with local organizations and companies to connect work-based learning to real working experiences for SLUSD students.
Infrastructure: 21st Century Information Superhighway
Expansion of Lit San Leandro fiber optic middle-mile network from 10 to 20 miles; significant policy and lease development, negotiation and execution required to support fiber optic expansion in collaboration with the Economic Development Administration, including management of non-technical elements of its $2.1 million grant to the City and with the City’s local partner, Lit San Leandro.
All San Leandro Unified School sites and over 300 businesses/non-profits and enterprise businesses were connected to fiber by 2018.
SL-WiFiber, name of San Leandro’s public wi-fi access, was launched (2016).
Entrepreneurship / Civic Innovation: Empowering Women, an Economic Opportunity
Transformation Event at San Leandro Tech Campus: Welcome to the New San Leandro, a Sept. 2015 San Leandro by Design event at the San Leandro Tech Campus, then a construction site. [see also, Truth Is Beauty case study].
Installation of artist Marco Cochrane’s Truth Is Beauty sculpture resulted in several civic outcomes:
Considerable & unusual media attention, from local to international.
Truth Is Beauty Public Tours led by volunteer docents focused on messaging: “What would the world be like if women were safe?”
Truth Thursdays: public art and music events at Tech Campus sponsored by Downtown San Leandro.
A Documentary by Lost Summit Films: Truth Is Beauty
We Imagine a World: San Leandro High School Academy for Multi-media produced a short video with a clear, diverse, compassionate, and equitable vision for their future based on the question posed by the Truth Is Beauty sculpture: “What would the world be like if women were safe?”
Concept for redeveloping WestGate Shopping Center’s cavernous second floor is launched at “New Horizons Innovation Café” event at a former Dodge auto plant in San Leandro hosted by now-WeAccel Advisor, Greg Delaune. Today known as GATE510, ShopCore Properties has developed almost 2 million s.f. of research, development and manufacturing space companies as diverse as biotech, robotics, cleantech, and AI.
Several organizations were founded and attracted to empower women and youth with the skills and resources needed to become entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, most notably Pilot City, Community Impact Lab and Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship.
Collaborated with San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Innovation to develop civic pilot projects under its exploratory expansion of its Startup in Residence Program (STIR), funded by a 3-year Economic Development Agency (EDA) grant.
