FiftyTwoDegrees place to be for innovative Netherlands
26 April 2006
Nijmegen is going to try harder to attract new businesses. Promotion and emphasising the city’s X-factor are expected to attract employers.
American, Chinese, German, Japanese, but also Dutch companies will be directly approached by lobbying teams, who will specifically canvas for Nijmegen.
There will also be ‘opportunity booklets’ summarising the city's qualities and a presentation booklet about the FiftyTwo Degrees office complex. These will point out the presence of the university, extensive hospital facilities, the Philips company, the green environment and the strategically favourable location on the River Waal and the German border. Nijmegen will also be extensively presented at trade fairs around the world.
All this will happen in close co-operation with the East Netherlands Development Board (OOM). OOM lends its support to projects all over Gelderland and Overijssel, but now Nijmegen is being given more funds to put itself in the limelight.
OOM manager Theo Föllings says that working on employers could be even more crucial than emphasising Nijmegen’s economic strengths: ‘We are going to tell employers what an excellent place Nijmegen is to live in, how good the schools are, and how great the nightlife is. Employers’ wives have a big input in these decisions: most of all they look at a city’s X-factor.’
The FiftyTwo Degrees office complex acts as a major billboard for Nijmegen. OOM will praise this site, whose main occupant is Philips, as the place to be for the innovative Netherlands. Föllings: ‘This is all about cross-pollination between the ICT industry around Philips Semiconductors and new enterprises.’
Föllings states that Nijmegen’s ambitions go further than FiftyTwo Degrees: ‘As far as we are concerned, the Winkelsteeg and the business sites around it are just as good an option, as long as the businesses can reinforce each other.’
According to Hannie Kunst, Nijmegen's new councillor in charge of economic development, we can also expect increasing activity around Bijsterhuizen and the port area, along with the concentration of medical knowledge technology in Health Valley, centred around the Radboud and Canisius-Wilhelmina Hospitals.
