Chamber Vision August 2014 | Page 20

20 August 2014 Emporia Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention & Visitors Bureau RDA Happenings Congratulations to Fanestil Meats on their recent ground breaking at the new plant site on west Highway 50. We look forward to their continued growth. Kent Heermann President, Regional Development Association of East Central Kansas REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOC. of EAST CENTRAL KANSAS The Regional Development Association of East Central Kansas (RDA) is the lead economic development organization for Lyon County and the Emporia area. The four members of the RDA are the Emporia Area Chamber of Commerce, Emporia Enterprises, the City of Emporia, and Lyon County. The RDA is located with the Emporia Area Chamber of Commerce and the Convention and Visitors Bureau at the Trusler Business Center, 719 Commercial, Emporia, KS 66801. Kent Heerman RDA President, can be contacted at 620-342-1600 ext. 16, or heermann@ emporiakschamber.org. Hostess Brands continues to add employees and expand their capacity. At the recent ribbon cutting on July 18th it was announced that a second auto bake line will be installed and 50 additional employees will be hired. We are really close to securing the warehouse project for Detroit Diesel Remanufacturing on Overlander Street. Simmons Pet Foods is well underway with their multi-million dollar expansion and the creation of over 80 new employees in the future. Birch Communications is increasing their Emporia workforce by more than 130 employees with the recent acquisition of Cbeyond. Hundreds of jobs are being created by these businesses. Construction is occurring and local contractors are working on these projects. The local economy has picked up. The future is quite bright for Emporia, Lyon County and the region. During World War II there was a slogan “loose lips sink ships”. The slogan implied that a person who had strategic knowledge was not to discuss that knowledge in a public setting, because you never know who is listening into the conversation, which would be harmful to the “war effort”. In the competitive environment of economic development, recruitment and expansion confidentiality is a must. When working with businesses confidentiality is an absolute. First, the private business does not want their competition to have knowledge of their expansion plans. Second, the process a business uses for a new location or expansion of an existing business is a process of elimination. Finally, businesses do not want to offend a community, suppliers or customers during an expansion project. When a business identifies a community as a potential site for expansion, the business does not want to be identified. The majority of the time an economic development corporation cannot publicly report that they worked or have worked with “xyz” company. During the site selection process company representatives may visit a community unannounced to get a sense of the community attitude. Those visitors are listening to the conversations in the local restaurants and coffee shops to get a feel for the issues, challenges and attitude of the community. During the selection process a business will narrow down the list of potential communities to 2 or 3. The tie-breakers are performance-based incentives and the “Lucy factor”. You ask what the “Lucy factor” is, the preference of the decision maker’s significant other or spouse. With publicly traded corporations it’s generally the “C-level” executives such as Chair, Vice-Chair, President/CEO, CFO, CAO, etc. who makes a decision based on business factors and the “bottom