Comstock's magazine 0919 - September 2019 | Page 81

special supplement
Intel, which makes mobile processors, is the
largest employer in Folsom. The company
chose to build here because "it had the
best blend of neighborhoods and affordable
living," according to communications
manager Linda Qian.
“What I think you’re going to see is a vibrant tech hub with
a pretty high per capita income as compared to other
communities.”
Don Pearson, chief strategy officer, Inductive Automation
F
or a long time, Folsom was known
for being the home of the peniten-
tiary where Johnny Cash recorded
his iconic “At Folsom Prison” album, but the
lakeside city’s reputation has been chang-
ing in recent years. These days, it’s a bur-
geoning technology hub, competing with
Silicon Valley as a potential home for tech
companies.
The affluent suburb has become a rising
hot spot for startups, venture capital firms
and Fortune 500 companies. Companies
like Toshiba, Moneta Ventures, StemEx-
press and Intel are there, and Intel alone
employs more people than Folsom State
Prison’s employees and inmates combined.
Though it may seem like it happened
overnight, Folsom’s transformation has
been in the works since the 1980s, when the
population began ballooning from a small
bedroom community of around 11,000 to
79,000 people.
In 1988, the city adopted a 30-year
plan, annexing land around Folsom and
plotting its use long before tech companies
were setting up shop in the rolling hills of
the region. City planners took into account
estimated population growth, transporta-
tion, education and even nature conserva-
tion and plotted out how best to use the real
estate.
Joe Gagliardi, president and CEO of the
Greater Folsom Partnership, has seen the
city flourish because of that plan.
“Part of the goal in the ’80s was to make
sure that it wasn’t a bedroom community,
but was instead a community people could
live and work and recreate in,” Gagliardi
says. “(The plan) set the framework for how
the city should grow. … Now, Folsom has a
pretty incredible jobs-to-housing balance.
The amount of households and the amount
of jobs are about one to one.”
Because of the success of that plan, in
2018 Folsom created another 30-year gen-
eral plan, which included the annexation of
3,500 acres south of Highway 50. The plan
estimates the city’s population will grow by
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