Q&A with Pinal County Economic Development Director Tim Kanavel (VIDEO)
Tim Kanavel has lived in Arizona 35 years and has worked for Pinal County for a decade. He is the first and, so far, only head of the county’s Economic Development program. This year, as the county has continued to grow commercially and residentially, workforce development was welded to economic development under his care.
He sat down with InMaricopa to talk about the booms and busts.
What is your background?
I’ve been in Pinal County a little over 10 years. I’ve been the economic development manager since then. I’m originally from Ohio and I got tired of the mud and cold and decided I’d come to a place where we didn’t have cold and mud all the time.
Describe the differences between what was happening here when you first came and what’s happening now.
When I first came here in the fall of 2009, our unemployment rate was 13.2%. Things were bleak. It really wasn’t a very attractive place to be. We had a lot of people that were abandoning their homes. It just wasn’t getting any better for some time, probably until about 2012.
