Mayor Mark Begich remarks
Pan-Pacific Business Conference
9 a.m.; May 26, 2004; Anchorage Hilton

Thank you, Dr. Ra, for that kind introduction, and for chairing the organizing committee for this extraordinary conference.

To President Sang Lee, who leads the Pan-Pacific Business Association - thank you for bringing your important organization here.

And to all of you - thank you for coming to Anchorage, and welcome to this important 21st Pan-Pacific Conference.

On behalf of Anchorage, we are proud to host this conference.

Past hosts have included the great cities of Singapore, Taipei, Sydney, Beijing, Bangkok, Seoul, and many other important international business capitals. Our city may be smaller, but we are on the edge of greatness. Your presence here certainly confirms that.

Today, I want to tell you a little about Anchorage and why we are a laboratory for the diverse, connected world of the future. I want to review our plans for how we plan to build our assets into a role as a recognized world leader in international business. Finally, I want to call on you, as the best and brightest in this field, to lend a hand on how we in Anchorage can build a better international city

First, let me tell you something about myself. My interest in business goes all the way back to my childhood. I made my first venture as an entrepreneur as a teen.

Like other entrepreneurs, I was motivated both by ambition and by necessity.

My father, Congressman Nick Begich, was lost in a small plane in 1972, when I was just 10 years old. When other kids were pursuing more typical student activities, it fell to me to manage the family’s business.

Necessity can be a great teacher. I learned about business by doing it. But I wanted more. That’s where ambition comes in. Its taking skills learned to the next level. Creating something new.

I have started more than one business in this town. My wife, Deborah, also is an entrepreneur and owns three businesses. Through our business efforts, Deborah and I gained the independence to raise our family in our own way. And we have gained the time and experience to contribute to Anchorage.

These are the rewards of the twin motivations I mentioned - necessity and ambition.

Anchorage stands in much the same position as I did when I built my business career.

Our city began as a simple tent city on the edge of Ship Creek. When the federal government built the Alaska Railroad from Seward to Fairbanks, the ocean anchorage off Ship Creek was an obvious place to unload supplies.

Our museum has a famous photograph of a land auction in a muddy field that took place there on July 15, 1915. Six hundred lots were sold, and Anchorage first appeared on the map.

Originally, Anchorage was a company town. The railroad was the only game around. Later, Army and Air Force installations and the oil industry made Anchorage into Alaska’s largest and most important city.

We became the hub for resource development and a hub for trade for the vast Alaska territory and later the state of Alaska, with an area of 570,000 square miles, or 146 million hectares.

In the past few decades, we have slowly diversified our economy beyond natural resources and the military. Our brightest lights relate to our role as an international air crossroads.

In global logistics, Anchorage is a key hub for Federal Express, UPS and other air cargo carriers. Our airport is the second busiest cargo airport in our nation, handling 4 billion pounds of freight annually.

In tourism, Anchorage serves a key role for a growing cruise ship industry, which brings hundreds of thousands of passengers through the city. Thanks in part to these visitors, the Ted Stevens International Airport handles 5 million passengers a year.

In 1915, those original 600 lots sold for $150,000. Less than 90 years later, our assessed property value in Anchorage is 18 billion dollars. On top of that, we issued $728 million in building permits last year – a record. And our population, now at 274,000, is growing faster than 1.5 percent per year. And we’re the 65th largest city in America.

As the first Anchorage mayor born in our city and as a new father, I particularly enjoy the fact that the largest component of our population growth is in births. Births outnumber deaths by more than three to one in our young population.

We also have significant in-migration. More and more Americans are moving to Anchorage to enjoy our fantastic quality of life.

If I sound proud of my hometown, that’s because I am. We are young, well educated, healthy and forward-looking.

We are diverse and multi-lingual. 93 languages are spoken in the Anchorage School District. We have language immersion programs teaching youngsters Spanish, Japanese and Russian, starting in kindergarten.

We live in a spectacular setting, in a strategic world location, and we are sitting on top of resources of untold value for mankind. We have a strong infrastructure, a skilled workforce, plentiful energy and water, and a great university.

As mayor, I have to count my blessings. These are extraordinary assets to start with.

All this came about as the first generations in our city met the necessities of this northern climate. They not only survived here at the mouth of Ship Creek, they thrived.

Now our generation knows well that this is the best place on earth. We’re ready to move beyond necessity to ambition. Our ambition is for Anchorage to be a great world city.

Let me outline the steps I am taking to make that happen.

First, I am gathering the best minds. I recently formed a 15-member Business Development Council in the Mayor’s office to coordinate and oversee an ambitious economic development agenda.

I have included some of our most successful local business leaders, as well as leaders in academia. I am especially pleased to have on the Council Dean Tom Case of the School of Business at the University of Alaska-Anchorage.

The University offers a program in global logistics to train our residents for the international air cargo industry. The Municipality had a role in helping found that program and continues to support it. This partnership is a perfect example of how our local government is reaching out to develop international business in Anchorage.

The council we have formed is another example of reaching out.

One of the council’s tasks is to help bring reality to my dream of making our city a leading center of international finance. We have unique assets to attract institutions of world finance.

First and foremost, as we like to say in real estate, is “location, location, location.”

Physical location is still important in our wired age. When the sun is up in the Far East, it is the middle of the night in New York. Anchorage is in between, and traders here can smoothly transition through markets around the globe.

Then, when the traders go home from work, they find themselves in one of the world’s most beautiful and desirable locations, able to enjoy an outdoor lifestyle that most of the world can only dream about.

Another advantage of our location is proximity for world travel. Our airport is just nine and a half hours from 95 percent of the population of the industrialized world. With more direct flights overseas, Anchorage could be one of the world’s most convenient places to hold a business meeting.

Finally, in Anchorage we have a special attitude and orientation for international business. Alaska has strong, historic trade links with our neighbors in the Pacific Rim, especially in the seafood industry. We already know how to do international business.

Anchorage enjoys sister-city relationships with Incheon, Korea; Chitose, Japan; Magadan, Russian; and Darwin, Australia; as well as other cities.

We have made these cultural links because we believe our future spans the Pacific.

Another major step toward Anchorage’s role as an international city will be our construction of a new convention center. We are currently reviewing two private sector proposals for a center that will include thousands more square feet of convention space in downtown Anchorage.

In the future, I hope to see major international conferences take place in that center – maybe a G-8 summit meeting or the World Economic Forum. I told you I was ambitious.

In addition to the convention center, we are investing a quarter-billion dollars in improvements at the port of Anchorage.

And, after years of work, a major new expansion is soon to open at the Ted Stevens International Airport. That project cost over $400 million.

Both of these facilities also have excellent intermodal transportation links, with highway, rail and pipeline connections. The international airport is also right next to the world’s busiest float plane base.

Anchorage is growing up, and in the coming years you will see our city taking on an ever larger role on the world stage.

Along with that larger role, we in Anchorage are prepared to take on the responsibilities of world citizenship.

The organizers of your conference have wisely noted that new problems have come with the economic leadership of Pacific nations. Our region’s new connections and innovations bring new issues with them. These issues include the threat of trade barriers, problems of intellectual property and technology transfer, and even the danger of terrorism.

Here in the United States, these times of war and terrorism have caused some of our citizens to turn inward. Some would prefer to wall off our country from the rest of the world.

In Anchorage, we realize that isn’t possible. Here on the edge of the Pacific, on the edge of the Arctic, and on the edge of the American nation, we know we must look outward, not inward.

As Anchorage becomes a great city, we will continue to build economic and cultural bridges across the Pacific. That is the way to our future.

As I mentioned previously, we are teaching many of our youngest children to speak Russian, Japanese and Spanish. That is more than symbolic. Our future is connected with other nations and other people.

As you hold your meetings here in Anchorage, I ask that you keep our goal of global connections in mind. Anchorage can be a laboratory for a city of the future - fulfilling the promise of technology, diversity, multiculturalism, and, most important, education.

I believe it will happen.

We have the assets here in Anchorage. We have the ambition. And, with your help, we will add the final ingredient: a clear vision of the path to success.

Thank you for your commitment to a more connected and more prosperous Pacific region. And thank you for your presence here in Anchorage, which underlines our city’s role in the great work of bringing the world together.