The economic development landscape is dotted with dollar bills. THINK of money invested to woo a company as an investment in our future. Good-paying jobs with a company that’s growing — often the reason for a move — quickly pay dividends in many ways for the community — increased business for stores, higher tax base and even new community inspirations.
In today’s competitive environment communities serious about attracting business and industry had better have cash available when a company comes calling.
Iola Industries has been an enormous blessing for Iola and the area, instrumental over the years in attracting such flagship industries as Gates Corporation, Haldex Brake, Russell Stover Candies, Herff Jones and Cameron. It also has played a significant role in keeping Columbia Metal Products purring along through thick and thin.
We have advantages: Utilities available to industrial sites at rates as good or better than others in southeast Kansas; two major highways and upscale city streets connecting them to prospective sites; reasonable tax rates; a reputation for having people eager to work.
We also have all the tax incentives that law allows.
Today we need more, such as assistance in improving existing structures when what is in place doesn’t suit a company’s needs. Sometimes even help with construction of a new facility. That’s how Iola’s industrial revival got started in the first place, in the years after Lehigh Cement and Pet Milk closed.
It is what others are doing and if we want to increase our industrial base, we must also. We don’t want to be on the outside looking in.
Chanute spent more than $800,000 to renovate a building formerly occupied by Hi-Lo Industries to accommodate Spirit AeroSystems, which opened about a year ago.
When Spirit announced expansion plans, 30 cities responded, which was reduced to 12 serious candidates. Chanute, willing to invest in its future, came out the winner.
Altogether, Chanute and the state of Kansas offered Spirit an incentives package worth nearly $6 million. Some of the incentives were creative, such as discount child care to Spirit workers in partnership with a local day-care and preschool provider.
The Spirit plant, which makes sub-assembly aircraft parts, has 35 employees and expects eventually to have 125 to 150.
Thursday evening Iola council members gave David Toland, Thrive Allen County executive director, authorization to negotiate purchase of the Haldex plant by an oilfield equipment manufacturer.
The council should be aggressive in its follow-up.
It’s a little like tending a flower bed. Without water, fertilizer and cultivation, flowers languish. With those elements, they grow and put on beautiful blossoms.
— Bob Johnson
Aggressive cities come out ahead in recruitment
