Business community is very interested in seeing more jobs in Morgan Hill

By John Horner

John Horner

The graphic you see below is the most recent (2015) available “Jobs Flow Map” for Morgan Hill. (You can pull up all kinds of data at fromonthemap.ces.census.gov.)

It shows 11,822 people coming into Morgan Hill for a typical work day, 16,850 people leaving Morgan Hill for work and only 2,645 people both living and working in the city.

This underscores why we are very interested in seeing more jobs in our city.

One project currently under evaluation is being developed by the Trammell Crow Company on land purchased from the Fry family at the corner of Condit Road and Cochrane Boulevard. TCC is working on plans for three industrial/commercial buildings totaling more than 1 million square feet. The eventual tenants/purchasers of these buildings are unknown, which is typical for the early phase of such projects. A full environmental impact report is being created to analyze the possible uses of such a site and the consequences of such uses. Early projections anticipate between 1,000 and 1,500 new jobs on-site, most likely focused on advanced manufacturing similar in kind to local companies Paramit, Velodyne and Golden State Assembly. These companies provide a broad range of jobs and in so doing support the overall community by getting commuters off the roads, providing demand for other local businesses and putting tax revenues into local government which are higher than the costs of supporting these businesses.

Some residents are concerned about the idea this development might become a truck stop/distribution center, but that eventuality seems at most a remote possibility. We will continue staying aware and involved in this project and are excited about having major new space to support the growth of our strong local advanced manufacturing businesses and/or the opportunity to attract more of these companies to Morgan Hill. A balanced community is a healthy community, and right now we need more jobs to be in better balance with the housing growth of recent decades.

John Horner is the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce.