Is it realistic to expect a county’s economic development organization to land a new project each and every year? Even though we all would like to see this happen, and that is what we strive for, these expectations are not realistic.

This is not to say that our efforts have been diminished. We are working harder now than ever before due to strong competition and due to the limited number of active projects that are seeking to locate. 

Many communities have not seen a new industrial location in years. There are some 4,000 organizations similar to ours throughout the United States all competing for projects, with less than 400 active projects at any given time.

Everything has to be just right for a company to make the decision to commit to locate and invest within a new community.

Sometimes I feel we forget about the past successes we have been so blessed to achieve and we only focus on when the next new company or new business will locate. It was just a few short years ago that we had several vacant buildings located throughout the county and now we have almost none.

The ARI/Moog building is now occupied by Toyoda Gosei; the Batesville American building is now occupied by Anderson Technologies; the Steel Services building is now occupied by Serta Mattress; Panola Mills is now occupied by Insituform; the Toro building in Sardis is now occupied by United Solutions; and the Steelmatic building in Sardis has been sold.

Let’s not forget about the new Cube Ice facility in the Airport Industrial Complex or GE Aviation’s new state-of-the-art facility with 480 employees and an investment that now exceeds $100 million, as well as all the expansions we have witnessed with our existing industry base. We truly have a lot to be thankful for.

The truth of the matter is we have been very successful, which has led us to a point and also to a dilemma as to what we do next in order to continue to grow and prosper. We recently purchased an additional 300 acres of prime industrial property to assure the availability of sufficient land for future industrial growth.

We will be working hard to develop that property into a first-class industrial site. The problem we face now is the lack of marketable existing buildings that we once had available. Site location consultants tell us that 9 out of 10 companies that are expanding and looking for new locations, prefer to purchase an existing facility rather than build.

Because of our past success, we simply have a very limited inventory of buildings that are available and marketable.

The question now is, what do we do about that? Even though right now we are only in the talking stage, in the near future we may have to consider if it’s time to invest in a spec building in order to maximize our chances of landing another new company.

Other communities have done this and have been successful, but there are no guarantees.  These facilities are expensive and the decision to move forward with a project like this has to be given serious consideration. This will not be an easy decision, but success seldom comes easily.

A project of this magnitude will have to be a collaborative effort between the Panola Partnership’s board and our county’s elected officials.

As I said, this will not be an easy decision to make, but with strong decisive leadership and a vision for the future of Panola County, I feel the right decision will be made.
Forever forward.

Sonny Simmons is CEO of the Panola Partnership.