I ... was always struck by how economic development discussions were ONLY focused on how to get a large employer to move to town My thoughts exactly. I see as

I ... was always struck by how economic development discussions were ONLY focused on how to get a large employer to move to town My thoughts exactly. I see as a politically expedient way to bring local job growth. The city of Portland has spent a lot of time and money, plus a few million kicked in by the state of Oregon, to lure Danish wind-turbine maker Vestas into building their North American headquarters there. As a taxpayer, I'm never sure if we get a good long term ROI on such deals. I think I'd feel better about it if they put that much money into bolstering the state's middling engineering and science university program education or fostering tech incubators. "Corvallis was once a hotbed for tech start-ups" Is that true or is it newspaper hyperbole? I graduated from OSU (in Corvallis), but campus life tends to be insular. I know there were some, but "hotbed" seems over the top.