Was Governor Hickenlooper channeling Moonlight Graham on Friday? Hickenlooper assembled an assortment of Douglas County elected officials and state government busybodies to announce a pipe dream that “could” create 4,000 jobs in Parker.
But can this really happen? Just who is Redbarre, and how can they claim to bring 4,000 jobs to Colorado and get the governor to host a press conference about them at the State Capitol? Is this all just a slick PR campaign (they claim to have a PR firm on the payroll)?
It turns out that Redbarre is a digital media company that has tweeted a total of just nine times – so you might not want to engage them for a social media project. It also seems to be a high growth company, claiming to be founded in 2017, but already having 5,001 – 10,000 employees, according to what the company furnished on its LinkedIn profile. Funny thing – we could not find individual profiles for these phantom employees.
RedBarre also controls a commercial real estate company – makes sense since they are going to build a 70-acre campus in Colorado, right? But RedBarre created the website for that outfit in March of this year.
We know that Hickenlooper’s film office is desperate for a win, but this doesn’t seem to be it. State government efforts to to make Colorado a destination location for movie production have been and will continue to be futile. Wall Street was not created via a government subsidy. Silicon Valley was not created out of a government program. Quite the opposite – these engines for economic growth were created out of free trade and the mutual benefit of creating ecosystems of like minded individuals trying to accomplish similar goals.
Companies that are serious about this industry will put down roots where things matter in this industry – as in Los Angeles or New York. Likewise, young people looking to make it in the film and media industry have no business moving to Parker, Colorado. It’s a numbers game – why move somewhere that provides very few opportunities, versus a place that has hundreds, or even thousands of companies that will compete for your skills?