Iola Industries intends to be proactive in its efforts to attract new business and industry and wants Allen County and area towns involved.
A new organization — Allen County Development Corporation — is anticipated by fall.
A first step toward attracting new businesses and industry will be to hire a consultant to catalog the community’s many assets, John McRae, Iola Industries president, told county commissioners Tuesday morning. It would cost about $70,000 to hire a person with expertise, he said.
“We need an inventory of assets from throughout the county,” McRae said, including specific information about such things as utilities, rail connections, the airport and Internet access, as well as workforce possibilities. That will give the corporation a leg up when it approaches prospects.
“There are lots of people looking for places to locate, more in the last six months,” McRae added. “We don’t want to miss the boat.”
McRae said Iola Industries will ask the county as well as Humboldt, Moran, LaHarpe and other towns to help pay for the consultant, saying it would be a smart investment by local governments to help create jobs for the entire county.
Mary Kay Heard, former longtime Iola retailer, pointed out that being prepared to attract new business and industry was similar to what made a store owner successful.
“You have to sow seeds,” said Heard, a board member. “You never know when someone might buy a washing machine when they come in to buy a key.”
Simply waiting for a new business or industry to come to Iola, Humboldt, Moran or Allen County is an out-dated mindset. New businesses need to be actively recruited today, McRae said.
Iola Industries, in place since 1955, is financially strong, but mostly in land holdings, said Jim Gilpin, board member. It’s recruiting efforts have been hit and miss.
“THE SOBER reality is that we’ve had some recent successes in spite of ourselves,” Gilpin said, such as with Russell Stover Candies’ decision 15 years ago to build a plant in Iola.
Back then, a delegation went to the Department of Commerce to flesh out what Iola had available — attractive utility rates, land and infrastructure in place — when, unbeknownst to the Iolans, Russell Stover Candies happened to be looking for a home for a new plant.
Iola was fortunate, Gilpin noted, that Iola Industries had 80 acres of land available for the candy maker, and that the roads leading to the property had been paved.
“Ninety days later Russell Stover Candies appeared, but they wouldn’t have known what we had to offer if we hadn’t gone to Topeka,” he said.
The outcome resulted from planning and initiative, but more is demanded, and in technical fields, that “we can’t do just with volunteers,” Gilpin said. “We need professional help.”
A likely makeup of Allen County Development Corporation would be three members from each commissioner district and perhaps 12 members appointed at large, Gilpin said.
“We want to be careful and deliberate in what we do and think in terms of the whole county, even beyond the county,” he said.
