By all accounts, 2013 was a down year for economic development locally and statewide. However, the first six months of 2014 have seen an increase in inquiries locally.
That was the word from Bill Konyha, President and CEO of the Economic Development Group of Wabash County, who presented a quarterly update Monday to Wabash County Commissioners. He will make similar presentations to the Wabash City Council and North Manchester Town Council in coming weeks.
So far this year, the EDG office has received 38 leads, compared to just 22 last year at this time, he said.
Of those leads, 35 were looking for a new site to locate, while three others were looking to expand.
“We are carrying 21 active leads,” he said. “And our primary resource is the Indiana Economic Development Corp. Our second is the EDG staff and board. The Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership is third.”
While the numbers are up this year, Konyha warned that the increase may not continue.
“The last two months things have slowed down considerably,” he said. “And with conversations I’ve had with my peers around the state, they say they’ve noticed the same thing.
“Nobody knows why, but all of a sudden it’s slowed down.”
This year, EDG has supported just $3.746 million in investment locally, creating 26 new jobs, Konyha continued.
Those investments created $857,530 in new payroll, with an average wage of $16.49. It also created $24,868 in new income tax, “assuming 100 percent of those of employees live in Wabash County,” he said. “And we know that’s not the case.”
In 2012, EDG helped create $32.215 million in capital investment, creating 228 new jobs. Last year, it helped with $13.547 million in investment, creating 28 new jobs.
“We are working on a number of projects,” he told commissioners.
He also reminded of the work to attract Borgers AG, a family-owned firm that specializes in automotive trim and sound-deafening insulation. Wabash finished second in the competition to land the $60 million, 160,000-square-foot factory. Company officials instead chose Norwalk, Ohio’s Firelands Industrial Park, largely because of the location of the firm to interstate highways.
“We competed in that project with Battle Creek, Michigan, with Lansing, Michigan, with Muncie, Indiana, and several larger communities,” Konyha said. “We made it all the way to the last cut. I would say as hard as that was to finish second in a project like that, we did learn from it.
“It was by far the most grueling due diligence process I’ve ever been through in my life. But because of that we’ve actually negotiated contractual relationships with Community Research Institute and with Workforce Development people.”
Through the relationship, the groups can provide various data far greater than Konyha and the EDG staff can compile it.
“Now when we get some of these requests and they give us 48 hours to turn it over,” he said, “some of the research it could take me three weeks to compile. I call it in to the Community Research Institute and get it back in 40 minutes, just because they have access to those databases.”
Commissioner chair Scott Givens thanked Konyha for the update and for his efforts to attract new business to Wabash County.