With economic development officials in Shelby County looking to reach out to counties within the region to possibly partner with and help spur economic growth both in Shelby County and elsewhere, it is something the economic development director in Fayette County is open to looking at.
Dan Parker, executive director of the Economic Development Group, spoke to the News-Examiner Monday in response to comments made last week by his counterpart, Dan Theobald. executive director of the Shelby County Development Corp., about seeking a possible partnership between the two counties.
Shelby County is interested in the partnership with Fayette County and other area counties, according to Theobald, due in part to the number of Fayette County residents he said commute to Shelbyville for work.
"We have a lot of people from Connersville that work in Shelby County. It makes sense for us to partner with Fayette, Ripley and others," Theobald told the Shelbyville News. "We are trying to spread out and are open to a regional partnership that would help bring jobs to the area."
While Fayette County is already part of one such partnership — Energize ECI, which is based in Muncie and a regional economic development partnership involving Fayette and nine other counties in east central Indiana — the possibility does exist for other such partnerships with different counties, Parker said.
"From a cooperative, organizational standpoint, Fayette County is certainly open to being part of one that will make sense for us," he said. "When I say make sense, I mean one that we're just not taking money and paying an organization without any benefits. We want to make sure there's opportunities we're cultivating and that's what Energize ECI is doing."
Such a partnership, according to Parker, would have to provide much of what Energize ECI has been able to for Fayette County, such as arranging meetings with site selectors and property management people, sales trips, marketing the county and region's workforce and education, and other assistance to help the county grow economically.
Parker does realize the importance of working with other counties to make things happen, citing Fayette County's relationship, for instance, with Wayne County and its economic development group.
"We both realize that if Wayne County has an opportunity, then Fayette County benefits and vice-versa," he said. "Sugar Creek (Packing) is getting ready to open up in that industrial park up by (Interstate 70), and that will bless Connersville. We'll have a ton of people from Fayette County go to work at Sugar Creek when that opens, and in the past certainly Visteon had tons of Wayne County and Henry County (residents working). There were certainly was a lot of commuting and that will continue, with or without an organizational structure behind it."
Also partnering with counties to the west, toward Indianapolis, would not be out of the question though, Parker concluded, as good things occurring in neighboring counties can have a ripple effect.
One area Fayette County differs from Shelby County in, according to Parker, is infrastructure such as gas and sewer, something which Theobald and Shelby County have cited as a reason for losing economic development opportunities in the past.
Fayette County doesn't have that issue, Parker said.
"Certainly, from a municipality standpoint, you're looking at streets, sewers, water systems," he said. "From a commercial, commerce standpoint, do we have all the bells and whistles we need to attract and keep people, or at least have them interested in coming here? I think we do. From an infrastructure standpoint, I've had no one tell us we're lacking here, other than hotels. That's been it. We've been complimented on our airport, the ease of moving from one part of town to the other, we've been complimented on our park. We've got Ivy Tech and IU, which helps from an educational standpoint ... there's a lot of things going on and all them will lead us where we want to go."
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