The Fourteenth Annual Southern Colorado Economic Forum will offer an improved regional economic forecast beginning at 7 a.m. Oct. 1 at the Antlers Hilton Hotel, 4 South Cascade, according to two University of Colorado at Colorado Springs faculty members.
More than 500 regional business leaders are expected to attend the forum to hear global, national and local economic forecasts. The forum is organized by Tom Zwirlein, professor, College of Business, and Fred Crowley, senior instructor, College of Business. Zwirlein and Crowley serve as forum director and co-director.
“The flavor of the Fourteenth Annual Southern Colorado Economic Forum is a lot more optimistic than the last couple of years,” Crowley said.
Joining Crowley and Zwirlein will be Gary Schlossberg, a senior economist with Wells Fargo Capital Management who will provide a national and international outlook. A panel discussion featuring Norman Bellingham, chief operating officer, U.S. Olympic Committee, Tom Duening, El Pomar Chair of Business and Entrepreneurship, UCCS, and Elliot Pulham, chief executive officer, U.S. Space Foundation, is also planned. Steve Helbing, regional president, Wells Fargo, will moderate the panel.
“There are clearly lots of indicators that southern Colorado is turning a corner,” Zwirlein said before Crowley quickly cautioned that large percentage increases can be misleading.
“A 22 percent increase coming off a year when you saw a 15 percent drop isn’t quite as impressive as you might want to believe,” Crowley said. “But for those who anticipated a V-type recovery, that’s probably not going to happen. It’s going to be, as we have predicted, a long, bottom-feeding recovery.”
Officially, the U.S. economy was in recession from Dec. 2007 to June 2009. For Colorado Springs, the lowest point was Feb. 2009 with modest increases in major indicators for the past several months, Crowley said. Buffering the Colorado Springs economy was the strong local presence of the military. But even the military’s presence cannot balance a 55 percent loss in manufacturing jobs that occurred over the past decade. Many of the job losses occurred in complex electronics manufacturing. Nationally, manufacturing jobs are down 31 percent during the same period.
To learn more about the forum or to register to attend, visit http://www.southerncoloradoeconomicforum.com/
UCCS, located on Austin Bluffs Parkway in Colorado Springs, is one of the fastest growing universities in the nation. The university offers 36 bachelor’s degrees, 19 master’s and five doctoral degrees. The campus enrolls about 9,000 students.