Why the creative come here…Austin TX that is

Austin, a city that has always been a little bit different, is thriving with a new class of inventive, imaginative worker.

For longer than anyone can remember, Austin has attracted people whose ideas and expression have led them to look at the world in new ways.

By Mark Lisheron and Bill Bishop

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

As a young lawyer arriving in Austin in 1981, former Mayor Kirk Watson met people with graduate degrees working as waitresses or as security guards —
any job just to be able to stay in Austin. In the past decade this legion of educated expatriates found that it could bring its creativity to bear in the
workplace, within businesses built on new ideas.

By 2000, Austin had the fifth-highest concentration of creative workers among the 50 largest U.S. cities, according to Richard Florida and Kevin Stolarick of
Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Only Washington, Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Seattle and San Francisco ranked higher than Austin. By comparison,
Houston ranked 11th, Dallas 17th and San Antonio 30th.

Florida calls this driving economic force the Creative Class. Its members make their livings composing, designing, problem-finding and problem-solving.
They are engineers and musicians, scientists and actors, software writers and novelists. They are the graduate students who once waited tables and
guarded buildings after-hours.

Austin has a larger percentage of its workers in creative jobs than Boston, New York, Portland and San Diego. More than 16 percent of Austin’s workers are
part of Florida’s Super Creative Class, which includes architects, scientific researchers, computer programmers, musicians and writers.

Creativity equals economic growth, according to Florida, a professor at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. Cities high in
technology and economic innovation — the country’s Cities of Ideas — have a creative class a third larger than those of traditional U.S. cities, the Austin
American-Statesman found. These cities’ populations grew at almost twice the national average over the past decade. In all cities, creative jobs pay more
than 40 percent more than other occupations.

"The idea that might have been called strange 25 years ago is now called entrepreneurial," Watson said at CCs Coffeehouse on Lamar Boulevard. "People
still come for the natural beauty, the openness, the celebration with pretty strong fervor of our diversity. There is just more potential."

Peter Zandan, a former professional student and the multimillionaire founder of a tech marketing company, put it another way. "Austin was always the
perfect place to drop out," he said. "It was only when Austin also became a place you could drop in that it really started to take off."

For the past 100 years, cities that had well-educated residents increased in size and wealth. That’s still true. However, Stolarick has found that creativity is
now more closely related to urban growth than is education. Stolarick uses a hypothetical example, based on the growth rates for America’s 244 largest
cities during the 1990s, to show the power of the new creative class.

A city of 1 million people, 300,000 of whom had college degrees but with nobody in creative occupations, added 90,000 people in the 1990s simply because
of these educated residents. A city of 1 million with 300,000 in creative occupations, whether or not they had college degrees, added 250,000 just on the
power of the Creative Class.

In 1900, almost 40 percent of Americans farmed. In 1950, 40 percent of American workers worked in manufacturing plants, and just 12 percent of the
population farmed. By 1990, almost half of all Americans worked in service jobs, 23 percent worked in factories, and just a handful worked the plow.

Just 10 percent of all American workers were in creative occupations in 1900, a number that took 70 years to double. By 2000, creative workers had
become the fastest-growing economic class in the country, according to data compiled by Florida and Stolarick. The writers of songs and software, the
drafters of new building designs or new computer chips made up 30 percent of the working population. And in the Cities of Ideas, such as Austin, creative
jobs would grow to well over a third of the work force.

Did cities grow because they had creative people, or did growing cities attract people in creative occupations? Stolarick isn’t sure. He is certain of Florida’s
contention that there is a "large-scale re-sorting of people among cities and regions nationwide."

Cincinnati and New Orleans, with 27 percent of their workers in the Creative Class, are being left out of an economy based on ideas. It’s a new creative
divide, and Austin, with 36.4 percent in the large creative grouping, is distancing itself, economically and socially, from more traditional cities.

"The big story, one that has been unfolding for some time," Florida writes, "is the rise of the Creative Class, the great emerging class of our time."

*

Peter Zandan made his way to Austin in 1977 after knocking around Mexico and Central America for two years in a Volkswagen bus. He completed a
doctorate in evaluative research at the University of Texas and went on to get a master’s degree in business.

"I tried to stay in school as long as I could," Zandan said at Flipnotics Coffeespace on Barton Springs Road. "I didn’t want to leave Austin, but most of the
professional jobs — real estate, banking, the corporate world — didn’t interest me. I was intrigued with the microcomputer industry."

The business of technology had been around Austin as far back as 1955, with the establishment of Tracor (Texas Research Associates Corp.). IBM and
Texas Instruments arrived in the mid-1960s, and in 1974 Motorola built a plant for the manufacture of transistors and semiconductors. Microelectronics and
Computer Technology Corp., AMD, Dell and Vignette followed.

In 1985, Zandan created IntelliQuest, which quickly established itself as a key provider of marketing research data to high-tech companies. At the time
Zandan took the business public in 1996, it was one of the fastest-growing companies in America, employing 500 people.

Zandan sold his company in 1999. Today, he teaches marketing at UT, is the chairman of the high-tech company Zilliant and is the managing director of the
public relations and consulting firm Public Strategies.

As Zandan sips latte from a bowllike cup on the back deck of Flipnotics, road graders and dump trucks growl and scrape on Barton Springs Road. The
morning traffic jam the work causes, as far east and west as you can see, represents the most obvious and reviled of the consequences of Austin’s growth.
Zandan seems not to notice but raises his voice enough to stress that the benefits far outweigh the problems.

"If you ask me, Austin is more desirable than ever before," Zandan said. "It keeps getting better and better because it offers more choices to more people.
The soul of this town is its tolerance. That has not changed."

*

David Miller, who plays stand-up bass for local band the Lucky Strikes, made a list of cities when he looked for a graduate school after leaving the
University of Michigan in 1992. As a freshman at Michigan, Miller chose nuclear engineering and physics because he figured that if he failed at what he
perceived to be the toughest curriculum, his next pursuit would be easier.

Miller’s real love was music. He believes in the connection between science and music, the ability to anticipate and react to patterns. A self-described Big
Band geek, Miller applied to graduate schools in Boston; Boulder, Colo.; Santa Barbara, Calif.; and Madison, Wis. The buzz among his musician friends in
Ann Arbor persuaded him to choose Austin.

For two years, Miller stood his bass in the corner of his place at the 21st Street Co-Op to devote all of his time to physics. At night, he explored music of
astonishing variety and competence. The investment of time to obtain a doctorate to the exclusion of his bass paid diminishing returns. He began playing
with several outfits until he was hired full-time by the Lucky Strikes in 1995.

"I took a master’s (degree) as a consolation prize," Miller said.

In the year he became a full-time musician, Miller established an 800-number business to answer queries on matters of physics, chemistry and
mathematics from students who would pay by the minute.

When the band went on the road, Miller abandoned the inquiry business. He spent $3,000 on a digital video camera and accumulated shelves of 90-minutes
tapes that he intends to someday edit into a movie.

When the band returned, Miller invested $8,000 in a bass, sealing his commitment to his music. To finance his purchase, he contracted with a startup
called Living.com, an online furniture store, to identify and track down credit card fraud.

The fraud-prevention software he wrote outlived the company, which failed in the spring of 2000. For a couple of weeks after that, Miller earned $5,000 as a
consultant, paid to figure out how to keep companies on the best long-distance telephone plan.

"I’ve always looked at my life as a sculpture, a hunk of clay that I’m sculpting," he said. "And when I’m done, I want it to be a work of art that challenges
people, all of the things art should be."

*

On the first Thursday in April, Lynn and Alan Pita staked out a piece of South Congress Avenue to watch as people much like themselves drifted from band
to celebration to display. This was what they thought they’d find when they came to Austin.

"There was a lot of activity in Austin," Lynn Pita said, recalling her first visit in 1995. "There were a lot of young people around, and that was important."

There was also tremendous opportunity. Lynn Pita, 28, whose degree in human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University is as current as this
economy, took a job at Trilogy. She started her own company, Expero Inc., this year. Alan Pita, 30, who earned his master’s in computer science from
Stanford, returned to IBM in Austin, where he had interned. He designs computer hardware.

Austin was a real and accessible city with a fine university, they said. But it was also an outdoor city with lakes, hills and respect for its green space. Their
house connects to the upper reaches of Barton Creek.

What will keep them here, Lynn said, is a multitude of choices, a solid base of companies that she is confident will emerge in solid shape from this most
recent economy. That variety is reflected in Austin’s social world, Alan added.

"I don’t want to have just three choices when I wake up in the morning. Austin, well, it’s gun racks and the Veloway. It’s got character. That’s the word."

*

Brent Adair came from Portland, Ore., where he designed and built a document imaging and management system for Intel. He came to Austin in August
2000 to write and perform his songs to guitar accompaniment.

Adair, 31, is the son of an electrical engineer and a music teacher. His identical twin brother, Craig, got the engineering degree. Adair chose liberal arts at
Baylor University, although he has a fascination for logic, algorithms and problem-solving. He was satisfied at Intel, creating, having something to show for a
day’s work.

There was for Adair another choice in music. "I have a great drive to be understood. Music has an amazing role in confirming and deepening what I’m
experiencing," Adair said at an outdoor table at the Spider House in North Austin. "I have seen someone in my audience break into tears hearing something
she understood but hadn’t been able to express. It’s wonderful."

So far, his successes have been modest. He won a songwriting contest in Houston. He’s had bookings at both of Austin’s Central Market stores. Playing
music means vying for work with 20-year-olds who will play for beer, Adair said.

But it isn’t brutal. Music in Austin is eclectic and promising, broad and deep enough to perpetuate itself and to grow, he said. Being married, with
responsibilities, he might have to limit his quest to three years. Adair cannot imagine trying this anywhere else.

"Austin is workable," he said.

*

Jason Fellman uses the word eclectic to describe Austin. He grew up playing drums and guitar in Portland, Ore. He toured for a year with a band after high
school.

"I decided music wasn’t fun anymore, and I applied to UT in the radio, television and film program," Fellman said at Curra’s Grill on Oltorf Street. "Austin had
great music and great places to hang out."

It also had a university churning with business ideas. Fellman and three of his dorm friends started a high-tech creative agency to raise money for what they
thought would be a bigger idea: a machine that could automate the stringing of beads on the necklaces they had seen on campus.

The beaded-necklace business was never launched. Instead, FG Squared became one of the true dot-com successes in Austin.

Fellman worries more than some over Austin’s ability to surmount its problems. He is particularly concerned that the city address downtown development,
growing up rather than out, to make mass transit not only possible but desirable. The city, to use a term he applies to business, is operating in the red
zone: The potential exists to succeed or fail spectacularly, depending upon the commitment of the city’s political and business leaders.

"This is a place that is creative, idealistic and open to possibilities," Fellman said.

*

Soon, Jan Lindelow said, he will retire to devote himself full time to those issues of social betterment he calls the "goodness" of Austin. Lindelow came to
Austin in 1997 to run Tivoli, a software company founded by former IBM employees. A Swede who had traveled the world for Sperry Corp., Lindelow, 56,
knew little of Austin. His wife was frightened by what she thought she knew.

"She thought it was rednecks, rifles and rattlesnakes," Lindelow said in a brilliant office of windows with a view of a man-made creek at Tivoli. "Instead, we
met with smart, caring people of different races and nationalities. Austin was as cosmopolitan as we were used to in the Northeast or Europe. Now my wife
won’t leave."

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