Brian Darby
Independent Review and Analysis
City of San Jose Community and Economic Development Committee August 24, 2026 - Item (d)2
Economic Development Activities Semi-Annual Status Report Executive Summary
The City Manager's Office of Economic Development and Cultural Affairs (OEDCA) presents an extensive record of activity for the February through July 2026 reporting period. The report covers arts and cultural programming, major sporting and technology events, small-business assistance, Business Improvement Districts, corporate and industry engagement, Foreign Trade Zone activity, international investment outreach, business openings, film permitting, and workforce development.
The staff memorandum explains that OEDCA operates through four principal service areas: Cultural Affairs; Economic Growth and Business Development; Workforce and Talent Development; and Strategic Support. The August report represents a transition toward formal written semi-annual reporting rather than primarily verbal updates.
That transition should be welcomed. Regular written reporting makes it considerably easier for the Committee and public to evaluate economic-development policy over time.
There is also substantial good news in the documents.
Among the most notable developments are:
• approximately 360,000 downtown visits during NVIDIA GTC, a 16.2% year-overyear increase; • 35,942 GTC-related visitors, nearly 78% above 2025;
• nearly one million downtown visits during the FIFA World Cup period; • World Cup programming throughout all 10 Council districts; • 54 days of Entertainment Zone activation;
• $490,000 in Storefront Activation grants;
• more than 800 applications for the new Small Business Start-Up Grant Program; • establishment of four new Business Improvement Districts and renewal of four existing BIDs;
• 6,894 active business tax certificates within those eight districts; • increased participation in Foreign Trade Zone 18;
• substantial outreach to semiconductor, artificial-intelligence, advancedmanufacturing, data-center, venture-capital and industrial-development interests; and
• expansion of San Jose's international economic-development efforts.
Independent evidence supports several of the City's positive conclusions, particularly concerning the extraordinary level of activity generated by the 2026 major-event strategy. During the World Cup, independent reporting found more than 900,000 downtown visits by July 15 compared with approximately 350,000 originally anticipated, while subsequent commercial reporting showed San Jose hotel revenue per available room increasing approximately 28% during the tournament.
Accordingly, this review does not conclude that the City's economic-development program is ineffective or that the report is simply promotional.
Quite the contrary: several programs appear promising, and some 2026 initiatives appear to have performed exceptionally well.
The principal issue is one of measurement and accountability.
The report is considerably better at telling the Committee what OEDCA did than demonstrating what changed in San Jose's economy because OEDCA did it.
That distinction is particularly important because San Jose has already established a much more sophisticated economic-performance framework. The City's FY 2026-27 Growing Our Economy Work Plan identifies long-term indicators for:
• sales, utility and property-tax revenue;
• jobs by sector;
• downtown vibrancy;
• income inequality;
• small-business openings and closures; and
• downtown foot traffic.
The City's current economic plan also establishes specific objectives for attracting businesses and jobs, preparing employment land, strengthening small businesses and BIDs, increasing downtown foot traffic, improving the convention and event economy, and developing a longer-term business-development strategy.
The fundamental recommendation of this review is therefore straightforward:
OEDCA should retain the narrative description of activities contained in the August report, but supplement it with a consistent economic-development performance dashboard that measures outcomes, costs, private investment, jobs and municipal fiscal return.
That would strengthen rather than undermine the City's case for economicdevelopment investment.
1. The Report Represents an Important Improvement in Transparency The August memorandum deserves credit for becoming part of a regular written reporting process.
Historically, OEDCA provided the Community and Economic Development Committee with regular verbal updates. Beginning in FY 2026-27, those reports are being accompanied by written memoranda.
This is important.
Economic-development initiatives frequently require several years to mature. A corporate contact today may become a site-selection inquiry six months later, an investment decision a year later and an operating business several years after that.
Without consistent written reporting, institutional memory becomes difficult and performance becomes difficult to evaluate.
The new Economic Data Analyst position may be particularly useful in this regard. The presentation states that the analyst will lead collection, analysis and application of economic data and support policies related to investment, development, job creation and revenue generation.
That is an encouraging development.
The next logical step should be a standardized reporting structure so that every semiannual report allows the Committee to compare:
previous period ➔ current period ➔ annual target ➔ long-term goal.
2. The Central Analytical Issue: Activity Versus Outcomes Many economic-development agencies struggle with the same measurement problem.
Activities are relatively easy to count:
• conferences attended;
• companies contacted;
• visitors counted;
• grants awarded;
• events held;
• businesses attending workshops;
• permits issued;
• delegations hosted.
Those figures matter.
But they are generally outputs, not ultimate outcomes.
The more important economic questions are:
• Were jobs created or retained?
• Were wages increased?
• Did businesses survive?
• Did private investment occur?
• Did commercial vacancies decline?
• Did City revenues increase?
• Did residents obtain sustainable employment?
• Did previously vacant storefronts become productive?
• Did a corporate contact ultimately produce an investment? • Did a major event generate more public revenue than public cost? San Jose itself has already embraced this distinction.
Its FY 2026-27 economic plan measures changes in tax revenue, employment by sector, business formation and closure, downtown foot traffic, vibrancy and income inequality.
That framework should become the backbone of future semi-annual OEDCA reports.
3. Major Events and the "Experience Economy"
A. The 2026 Strategy Appears to Have Produced Real Results One of the strongest sections of the report concerns major events.
San Jose hosted or activated around:
• NVIDIA GTC;
• NCAA March Madness;
• FIFA World Cup;
• World Cup watch parties;
• CityDance;
• public-art installations; and
• Entertainment Zones.
The presentation reports 35,942 GTC-related visitors and approximately 360,000 overall downtown visits during the GTC period.
The memorandum provides an additional useful detail: out-of-state GTC visitation increased 50.9%, with visitors originating from 956 ZIP codes nationwide.
That is important because outside visitors represent a greater likelihood of new money entering the local economy, rather than merely relocating spending that would otherwise have occurred elsewhere within San Jose.
GTC also deserves special consideration because it operates simultaneously as a visitor event and an economic-development event.
Its participants are connected to industries in which San Jose has genuine competitive advantages:
• artificial intelligence;
• semiconductors;
• software;
• advanced computing;
• data centers;
• networking;
• venture investment; and
• advanced manufacturing.
This makes GTC potentially more valuable economically than an ordinary convention.
The City should therefore measure both:
visitor-economy impact
and
business-development impact.
4. FIFA World Cup: Probably the Clearest 2026 Success Story The report states that nearly one million visits were recorded downtown during the World Cup period and that programming occurred in all 10 Council districts.
Entertainment Zones were activated for 54 days, including 39 days supporting World Cup watch parties.
Independent evidence substantially supports the City's description.
CBS Bay Area reported that organizers had initially anticipated approximately 350,000 visits to San Pedro Square and downtown San Jose. By July 15, more than 900,000 visits had already been recorded.
Commercial reporting following the tournament found:
• more than 500,000 passengers passing through San Jose International Airport during the six-week tournament; and
• San Jose hotel revenue per available room increasing approximately 28%.
These figures strongly suggest that the City's strategy of capturing economic activity from games physically played in Santa Clara succeeded in drawing substantial activity into San Jose.
That deserves recognition.
It also provides an important policy lesson.
San Jose does not necessarily need to own the stadium or physically host every sporting event to capture a significant portion of the surrounding economic activity.
Downtown programming, transit connections, watch parties, Entertainment Zones, restaurants, hotels and cultural activities can convert a regional event into a San Jose economic opportunity.
That model could potentially be applied to future major events.
5. But "One Million Visits" Is Not the Same as One Million Visitors The City should be careful about terminology.
A "visit" generally does not necessarily represent a unique person. One person who comes downtown on five different days can potentially generate five visits.
Accordingly:
visits* unique visitors.
Likewise:
visitors* dollars spent.
And:
dollars spent* net economic impact.
These distinctions do not invalidate the City's numbers.
They simply establish what additional information is needed.
Future major-event reports should distinguish:
1. total visits;
2. unique visitors;
3. visitor origin;
4. overnight visitors;
5. hotel room nights;
6. average hotel rate;
7. restaurant and retail spending;
8. taxable sales;
9. hotel-tax collections;
10. City operating costs;
11. public-safety costs;
12. sanitation and transportation costs;
13. sponsorship or outside revenue; and
14. net City fiscal impact.
That would allow the Committee to move from an impressive attendance figure to a rigorous fiscal evaluation.
6. Major Events Should Receive a Consolidated Post-2026 Accounting There is now enough evidence to justify a comprehensive post-event study.
This is particularly important because San Jose's experience economy is becoming a deliberate economic-development strategy rather than a collection of isolated events.
The City's current economic plan explicitly identifies major events as an economic priority and acknowledges that capturing their full potential requires a longer-term strategy.
The City should therefore prepare an SJ26 Economic and Fiscal Impact Report covering:
Super Bowl-related activities
Independent reporting found downtown bars experiencing very substantial sales increases during Super Bowl weekend, while hotel average daily rates and RevPAR also increased substantially year over year.
NCAA March Madness
San Jose has historical evidence for comparison. When the City hosted NCAA tournament games in 2019, the event reportedly generated approximately $7.6 million in economic impact and 1,700 booked hotel rooms.
That provides an excellent baseline against which the 2026 tournament can be evaluated.
FIFA World Cup
The World Cup substantially exceeded anticipated downtown visitation and produced measurable hotel gains.
NVIDIAGTC
GTC generated measurable growth in downtown and out-of-state visitation.
The City should determine what these events collectively produced in:
visitor spending+ hotel revenue+ taxable sales+ City taxes+ business leads - City costs.
This is not an argument against future event spending.
It is the information necessary to determine which event investments deserve expansion.
7. Downtown Recovery: Major Events Help, But They Are Not a Complete Economic Strategy
The report understandably emphasizes the extraordinary event activity downtown.
However, event traffic should not obscure the underlying structural challenge.
Before the World Cup, reporting citing Bay Area Council Economic Institute data indicated that downtown San Jose had recovered approximately 90% of its prepandemic foot traffic.
The City's own economic plan acknowledges continuing challenges involving downtown perception, quality-of-life issues and commercial and office vacancy.
At the same time, San Jose's long-range Downtown Strategy contemplates substantial additional commercial and residential capacity, including up to 14.2 million square feet of new commercial office capacity and significant residential, retail and hotel development.
These facts reinforce an important distinction:
Events can accelerate downtown recovery, but they cannot substitute for a functioning mixed-use downtown economy.
The longer-term objective remains:
• more residents;
• occupied offices;
• successful storefronts;
• hotels;
• entertainment;
• restaurants;
• public spaces;
• transit;
• cultural amenities; and
• regular everyday pedestrian activity.
The encouraging aspect of the 2026 experience is that it demonstrates downtown's ability to absorb and benefit from very large numbers of visitors.
The next challenge is converting some of that episodic activity into regular year-round activity.
8. Entertainment Zones May Be One of the Most Important Experiments in the Report The Entertainment Zone program deserves closer analysis than it receives.
The memorandum reports 54 activation days, including 39 World Cup-related days.
Rather than simply viewing Entertainment Zones as temporary event infrastructure, the City should evaluate them as an economic-development experiment.
Questions should include:
• Did participating businesses experience higher sales? • Did people remain downtown longer?
• Did activity spread beyond San Pedro Square?
• Were public-safety incidents manageable?
• What were sanitation costs?
• Did merchants support continuation?
• What operating model worked best?
• Could Entertainment Zones support smaller recurring events? If the answers are favorable, this may be one of the 2026 innovations worth institutionalizing.
9. Small-Business Storefront Grants: A Promising Program That Deserves Better LongTerm Measurement The Storefronts Activation Grant Program distributed $490,000 to 49 businesses.
The underlying memorandum explains that the redesigned program provides $10,000 grants and requires recipients to make at least a three-year lease commitment.
That three-year requirement is particularly important.
It ties public assistance to a meaningful private commitment.
This program therefore appears structurally stronger than an unrestricted smallbusiness grant.
The relevant long-term question is whether the grants actually produce:
• lower storefront vacancy;
• successful businesses;
• sustained leases;
• additional employment;
• private investment; and
• stronger commercial corridors.
Future reports should follow each cohort for at least three years.
A simple survival table would be useful:
Measure Year 1 Year 2 Year 3
Businesses still operating
Employees
Private capital invested
Vacant storefronts occupied -
Businesses renewing lease -
That would tell policymakers far more than the grant amount alone.
10. Start-Up Grants: 800 Applications Reveal Something Important The Business Start-Up Grant Program received more than 800 applications.
After eligibility review, 430 applicants qualified, while 21 initial awards were recommended: ten $10,000 grants and eleven $5,000 grants.
This means fewer than 5% of qualified applicants received an initial award.
That should not automatically be interpreted as a program weakness.
Instead, it reveals something potentially important about San Jose's entrepreneurial economy:
there appears to be substantially more demand for early-stage business capital than the grant program can satisfy.
The policy question therefore becomes:
'
Should San Jose simply increase grant funding, or can the City use limited public dollars to unlock substantially more outside capital?
Current national research supports examining revolving-loan funds and similar financing mechanisms. The Urban lnstitute's 2026 study of Economic Development Administration revolving-loan funds notes that small businesses frequently face capital-access constraints and examines the long-standing use of self-replenishing public loan pools to address that financing gap.
San Jose's current economic plan is already moving toward partnerships with missiondriven lenders, including community development corporations and CDFls, to increase commercial-space occupancy.
That direction deserves encouragement.
A possible future model would combine:
City grant+ CDFI financing+ bank capital+ technical assistance.
The objective should be to maximize the amount of sustainable private investment produced by each City dollar.
11. Business Improvement Districts: An Important Structural Accomplishment The expansion of Business Improvement Districts is one of the most significant longterm developments in the report.
Four new districts were approved:
• Alum Rock;
• East Village;
• Story Road; and
• The Alameda.
Four existing districts were renewed:
• Downtown;
• Japantown;
• Monterey Road; and
• Tully Road/Eastridge.
Together, the eight BIDs represent an FY 2026-27 budget of approximately $1.493 million and 6,894 active business tax certificates.
The City's current economic strategy reports that seven new BIDs have been formed during the past two years and identifies helping them become self-supporting as an FY 2026-27 priority.
This represents a potentially important decentralization of economic-development capacity.
Instead of City Hall attempting to manage every commercial corridor identically, local business districts can develop services appropriate to their particular circumstances.
Those can include:
• cleaning;
• beautification;
• marketing;
• events;
• public-space management;
• merchant coordination;
• wayfinding;
• lighting;
• business recruitment; and
• neighborhood identity.
Other large cities continue to invest heavily in this model. New York City, for example, announced more than $8.4 million in commercial-corridor grants in August 2026 supporting public art, street cleaning, lighting, wayfinding, district marketing and BID development.
San Jose therefore appears to be moving in a direction consistent with broader urban economic-development practice.
12. But BID Formation Should Be the Beginning of Measurement, Not the End The fact that a BID exists is not itself an economic outcome.
The objective is a stronger commercial district.
Each BID should therefore report a common set of indicators.
Recommended measures include:
• storefront vacancy rate;
• business openings;
• business closures;
• pedestrian traffic;
• taxable sales where legally and statistically feasible; • merchant satisfaction;
• cleanliness;
• reported public-safety concerns;
• events and attendance;
• private investment;
• assessment collection rate;
• administrative overhead; and
• leverage of outside funds.
That would allow the City to compare districts while still recognizing that Alum Rock, Downtown and Japantown have very different economies.
13. Corporate and Industry Outreach Is Well Targeted
OEDCA's industry-engagement strategy is one of the report's stronger areas.
Staff participated in:
• SPIE Advanced Lithography;
• Manufacturing Day;
• NAIOP I.CON West;
• Silicon Valley Economic Forum; and
• TechEx.
The memorandum identifies contacts across semiconductor manufacturing, photonics, biotechnology, medical devices, data centers, energy, venture capital, artificial intelligence, loT, cybersecurity and industrial real estate.
This is a sensible cluster strategy.
San Jose should concentrate its limited economic-development resources where the city possesses genuine comparative advantages rather than attempting to compete indiscriminately for every industry.
The City's FY 2026-27 plan follows exactly that approach. It calls for identifying three priority industry clusters and creating a three-to-five-year Business Development Strategy designed to accelerate investment, employment and recurring City revenue.
This alignment between current outreach and long-term strategy is encouraging.
14. Corporate Outreach Needs a Visible Conversion Funnel The weakness is again measurement.
The report frequently uses terms such as:
• "engaged";
• "established relationships";
• "strengthened relationships";
• "provided visibility";
• "generated opportunities."
These are perfectly legitimate descriptions of early-stage economic-development work.
However, the Committee ultimately needs to know what happens next.
A business-development pipeline should report:
Initial contacts
Qualified prospects
Site-selection inquiries
Site visits
Projects under negotiation
Investments secured
Jobs committed
Jobs actually created
Recurring City revenue
Not every corporate conversation will produce an investment.
Nor should staff be criticized when a legitimate prospect does not ultimately choose San Jose.
But tracking the funnel allows policymakers to determine whether the outreach strategy is productive.
15. The City's New Economic Data Analyst Can Help Close This Gap The timing of the new Economic Data Analyst position is therefore particularly appropriate.
The presentation says the analyst will collect and apply economic data to policy, business engagement, investment, development, job creation and revenue generation.
One of the position's first major projects should be creation of a standardized economic-development dashboard.
The dashboard should be public.
It should also maintain the same indicators from year to year whenever possible.
Constantly changing performance measures makes longitudinal evaluation difficult.
16. Foreign Trade Zone 18: Encouraging Growth, but Economic Impact Should Be Demonstrated
The City's Foreign Trade Zone program added four approved applications:
• KLA Corporation;
• Western Digital Technologies;
• Rose Batteries; and
• Energy Recovery.
Participation increased from 12 companies to 16, with six additional applications under federal review.
That is an encouraging business-retention and international-trade development.
Foreign Trade Zones can provide meaningful benefits by allowing companies to defer, reduce or in some circumstances eliminate certain customs duties.
However, federal research provides an important caution.
The Government Accountability Office has concluded that relatively little is known about the overall economic impact of FTZs and that existing employment cannot automatically be attributed to FTZ status because the counterfactual-what companies would have done without the program-is difficult to establish.
That does not argue against San Jose's FTZ.
It argues for better local measurement.
Future reports should identify:
• participating-company employment;
• employment growth;
• capital investment;
• imports and exports;
• expansions;
• business retention;
• estimated customs savings; and
• City revenue associated with participating businesses.
If FTZ status helped keep or expand a major advanced-manufacturing employer in San Jose, that is a compelling economic-development result.
The City should document it.
17. Film Permitting: Positive Result, Incomplete Baseline The report states that the new Film Permit Program website and email system contributed to a 75% increase in film permits and that 98% of surveyed applicants reported a positive experience.
The 98% satisfaction result is useful.
The 75% increase requires additional context.
A percentage without the underlying count can be misleading.
For example, an increase from four permits to seven permits and an increase from forty permits to seventy permits are both 75% increases but have very different economic significance.
Future reports should simply show:
previous comparable period: X permits
current comparable period: Y permits
change: +75%.
The City should also consider reporting:
• average processing time;
• filming days;
• production spending;
• local hires;
• permit revenue; and
• applicant satisfaction.
18. International Innovation and Investment Summit
The City's inaugural International Innovation and Investment Summit attracted 94 participants representing nine countries.
The event included tours of San Jose's innovation corridors, employers and development sites and concluded with an executive summit at Zoom headquarters featuring CEO Eric Yuan.
This is a reasonable economic-development strategy.
International investors and corporate executives cannot consider opportunities they do not know exist.
The City therefore has a legitimate role in marketing employment land, companies, research assets and investment opportunities.
The measurement issue arises afterward.
The City should track:
• follow-up meetings;
• investor inquiries;
• site visits;
• trade relationships;
• investment commitments;
• foreign direct investment;
• business expansions; and
• eventual jobs.
The success of an international economic-development summit should ultimately be measured not by the number of people in the room but by what happens after they leave.
19. Emprendete and Linguistically Accessible Entrepreneurship The Emprendete program attracted more than 200 businesses and offered Spanishlanguage programming involving artificial intelligence and digital marketing.
This initiative addresses an important economic-development issue.
Entrepreneurship programs are considerably less useful if potential entrepreneurs cannot effectively access them because of language or institutional barriers.
The report appropriately recognizes continuing demand for culturally and linguistically accessible resources.
The next evaluation step should track whether participants subsequently:
• obtain licenses;
• start businesses;
• receive financing;
• hire employees;
• enter grant or loan programs;
• adopt digital tools; or
• remain in business.
Attendance demonstrates demand.
Business formation and survival demonstrate economic outcome.
20. Workforce Development Deserves Greater Emphasis
The August report describes more than 200 youth participating in the San Jose Works Summer Program kickoff and receiving onboarding, transportation assistance and preparation for paid placements.
This is worthwhile activity.
However, a kickoff attendance figure is a relatively weak workforce-development performance measure.
Research on summer youth employment programs is instructive.
Urban Institute research finds that these programs can provide valuable early work experience and other benefits, but evidence of long-term employment effects is mixed. Strong employer engagement and sustained connections to the workforce are therefore particularly important.
Other workforce models that combine education, employment pathways and sustained support have demonstrated stronger effects in some evaluations. For example, an Urban Institute evaluation of the Opportunity Works model found increased postsecondary enrollment and increased connection to education or employment.
San Jose should therefore track:
• participants enrolled;
• participants completing;
• paid placements;
• employer participation;
• credentials;
• six-month employment;
• twelve-month employment;
• median wages;
• continuing education;
• employer retention; and
• cost per successful outcome.
This is particularly important because economic development should ultimately be evaluated not simply by the number of companies attracted but by whether San Jose residents participate in the resulting prosperity.
----~--------------·-·------
21 . Arts, Culture and Public Space Are Legitimate Economic-Development Tools The report includes:
• projection mapping at SAP Center;
• illuminated public art;
• Gaiascope;
• Hometown Heroes;
• CityDance; and
• other cultural programming.
These programs should not automatically be dismissed as unrelated to economic development.
Successful downtown economies depend partly upon place.
Workers, residents, tourists and businesses make location decisions based on more than office rents.
They respond to:
• public space;
• restaurants;
• cultural identity;
• entertainment;
• safety;
• transportation;
• amenities; and
• quality of life.
The City's current strategy explicitly treats placemaking and downtown vibrancy as components of economic development.
The analytical caution concerns attribution.
If an artwork is visible to millions of people who happen to pass through downtown, that does not establish that the artwork caused those visits.
Future cultural-economic reporting should distinguish between:
exposure
and
attributable visitation.
Useful measures could include event attendance, surveys, dwell time, nearby pedestrian counts and participating-business sales.
22. The Report Needs More Cost Information
Perhaps the largest missing element across the entire document is program cost.
The report identifies grants, events, conferences, programs and activations but rarely places the economic outcome beside the complete public cost.
The Committee should eventually be able to evaluate:
Initiative
GTC support
World Cup
activation
Outside
City Cost
Funding
March Madness -
Storefront
grants
Start-Up grants
BIDs
International
summit
Film permitting
$490K +
admin
$1.493M BID
budgets
Private
Investment
Jobs City Other
Revenue Outcomes
49 businesses
21 initial
awards
6,894
certificates
94 attendees
permits +75%
The purpose would not be to demand that every arts event or workforce program generate an immediate financial profit.
Municipal government has legitimate social, cultural and community objectives.
Rather, it would allow policymakers to distinguish between:
economic return, fiscal return, social return and cultural/community return.
Those are different things, and each can be legitimate.
23. Fiscal Impact and Economic Impact Should Be Separated This distinction is especially important.
Suppose an event generates $20 million in regional spending.
That does not mean the City receives $20 million.
The City receives only applicable tax and fee revenues.
Conversely, some developments can create recurring fiscal benefits for decades.
Therefore, major economic-development projects should report two different figures:
Economic impact
Income, spending, jobs and investment occurring within the local economy.
Municipal fiscal impact
Revenue flowing specifically to the City minus City expenditures associated with the activity.
Both are important.
They answer different questions.
24. Geographic Distribution Should Also Be Reported
One encouraging aspect of the World Cup strategy was programming across all ten Council districts.
That principle should extend beyond events.
The Committee should periodically receive a geographic analysis showing where:
• grants are awarded;
• businesses are opening;
• businesses are closing;
• jobs are being created;
• BIDs operate;
• storefront vacancy is improving;
• private investment occurs; and
• City economic-development dollars are spent.
This would allow policymakers to determine whether economic growth is broadly distributed or concentrated within a limited number of neighborhoods.
The City's intergovernmental policy framework similarly emphasizes downtown revitalization alongside equitable investment in neighborhoods and support for small businesses and public spaces.
25. Recommended Semi-Annual Economic Development Dashboard A future report could retain the narrative format while adding a two-page dashboard.
Citywide Economic Indicators
Indicator Baseline Target Current Previous Period Trend Jobs created/retained 1'/4-
Private capital investment - 1'/4-
Sales-tax revenue 1'/ 4-
Property4axrevenue 1'/4,
Utility-tax revenue 1'/4-
Small-business openings 1'/4-
Small-business closures 1'/4-
Downtown foot traffic +10% 1'/4-
Downtown office vacancy - 1'/4-
Ground-floor vacancy 1'/4-
Hotel occupancy 1'/4-
RevPAR 1'/4-
These measures closely correspond to indicators the City has already adopted.
26. Program-Level Performance Measures
Each OEDCA program should then have several program-specific measures.
Small Business
• grants awarded;
• private dollars leveraged;
• business survival;
• jobs created;
• storefronts occupied.
Business Development
• companies contacted;
• qualified prospects;
• site visits;
• investments secured;
• jobs committed;
• jobs realized.
BIDs
• vacancy;
• openings;
• closures;
• pedestrian traffic;
• merchant satisfaction;
• private investment.
Workforce
• enrollment;
• completion;
• placement;
• wages;
• retention;
• credentials.
Major Events
• visitors;
• unique visitors;
• hotel room nights;
• taxable spending;
• City revenue;
• City cost;
• net fiscal result.
International Development
• leads;
• follow-ups;
• site visits;
• investment;
• exports;
• jobs.
This would create an unusually strong municipal economic-development reporting system.
27. Recommended Questions for the Committee
The following questions are intended to recognize the work already accomplished while obtaining the additional information necessary for policy evaluation.
1. Could future semi-annual reports be organized around the economic indicators the City has already adopted, including jobs, tax revenue, business openings and closures and downtown foot traffic?
2. Given the exceptional World Cup visitation results, will staff prepare a consolidated post-SJ26 economic and fiscal analysis covering World Cup, Super Bowl, March Madness and other major events?
3. Can that analysis distinguish total visits from unique visitors and separately identify visitor spending, hotel performance, City revenues and City costs?
4. Which elements of the World Cup Entertainment Zone strategy worked particularly well, and should any become permanent or recurring economicdevelopment programs?
5. For NVIDIA GTC, how many corporate or investor contacts progressed into business-development leads, site-selection discussions, expansions or investments?
6. Can future reports track Storefront Grant recipients for at least three years, including survival, jobs, private investment and whether previously vacant storefronts remain occupied?
7. Given that 430 Start-Up Grant applicants qualified while only 21 initial awards were recommended, can the City leverage CD Fis, revolving-loan funds or private financial institutions to serve more of these businesses?
8. Can the City establish a common performance dashboard for all BIDs, including storefront vacancy, openings and closures, pedestrian activity and merchant satisfaction?
9. Can corporate outreach be reported as a pipeline-from initial contact through qualified prospect, site visit, investment, jobs and eventual City revenue?
10. Can staff quantify the employment, capital investment and retention associated with companies participating in Foreign Trade Zone 18?
11. Can film-permit reporting provide the actual permit counts underlying the reported 75% increase, along with processing time and production activity?
12. Can workforce reports emphasize completion, placement, wages and employment retention in addition to participation?
13. Can future reports show City cost and outside/private funding alongside major program results?
14. Can economic and fiscal impact be reported separately so the Committee understands both the broader community benefit and the direct effect on the City's finances?
15. Could the new Economic Data Analyst develop a consistent public dashboard so residents and policymakers can follow the same indicators from year to year?
28. Overall Assessment
The August 2026 Economic Development Activities report contains more substantive accomplishments than a superficial reading might suggest.
The major-event strategy appears to have performed particularly well.
World Cup activity substantially exceeded anticipated downtown visitation, and independent hotel data reinforce the conclusion that the event generated genuine economic activity.
GTC continues to grow and brings precisely the type of technology audience that aligns with San Jose's underlying industrial strengths.
The expansion of Business Improvement Districts creates local institutional capacity that could continue producing benefits long after individual grants expire.
The Storefront Activation Grant Program appears sensibly designed around multi-year lease commitments.
The extraordinary response to the Start-Up Grant Program demonstrates entrepreneurial demand.
OEDCA's corporate outreach is concentrated in sectors where San Jose has plausible competitive advantages.
Foreign Trade Zone participation is expanding.
The City is developing international investment relationships.
And the addition of an Economic Data Analyst creates an opportunity to substantially strengthen evaluation.
These accomplishments deserve acknowledgment.
At the same time, the Committee should expect more from the measurement system.
The weakness of the report is not primarily that OEDCA is doing the wrong things.
The weakness is that the document often does not provide enough evidence to determine which of the things OEDCA is doing are producing the greatest return.
There is a major difference between:
"We attended an industry conference."
and:
"We generated 25 qualified prospects, six site visits, two expansions, 400 jobs and $2 million in recurring City revenue."
There is a major difference between:
"We distributed $490,000 in grants."
and:
"Three years later, 90% of recipients remain in business, 40 vacant storefronts remain occupied, recipients created 150 jobs and every City dollar leveraged four dollars in private investment."
There is a major difference between:
"Downtown received nearly one million visits."
and:
"The event generated X dollars in incremental taxable spending, Y dollars in City revenue and Z dollars in City costs."
The first statement in each example documents activity.
The second demonstrates performance.
Conclusion
San Jose has considerable economic strengths and some equally substantial challenges.
It remains the center of one of the world's most important technology regions, possesses an extraordinary concentration of engineering and technical talent, hosts globally significant companies and events, and has demonstrated during 2026 that downtown can successfully accommodate very large regional and international gatherings.
At the same time, San Jose faces competition for investment, high costs of doing business, commercial vacancy, uneven downtown recovery and limited public resources. The City's own economic strategy openly acknowledges many of those challenges.
That combination makes rigorous economic-development measurement especially important.
The Committee does not need to choose between supporting OEDCA's work and asking demanding questions about results.
It should do both.
The August report provides substantial evidence that staff have been active and that several initiatives are producing encouraging results.
The next step is to build a reporting system capable of demonstrating:
what worked,
what it cost,
who benefited,
how much private investment followed,
how many jobs resulted,
what revenue returned to the City,
and ultimately,
which programs San Jose should expand, modify or discontinue.
The encouraging conclusion is that San Jose does not have to invent that measurement framework from scratch.
The City has already adopted many of the right indicators: tax revenues, jobs by sector, small-business openings and closures, downtown vibrancy, income inequality and foot traffic.
The task now is to connect those indicators consistently to the activities reported by OEDCA.
If the City does that, future semi-annual reports can become more than descriptions of economic-development activity.
They can become genuine performance reports showing how public policy is affecting San Jose's economy and its residents.
I used Al in the some of the research, the formatting and development of this report. I checked all the sources.