Economic Partnership Director: 2017 promising for economic growth
By Melissa Rollins, Editor, editor@newsandpress.net
Though it is still early in the New Year, Frank Willis, Executive Director of the Darlington County Economic Partnership, said that he has high hopes for the economic growth in the county.
“Darlington County, I think we’re going to have a good year,” Willis said. “I don’t know yet how good but we have the potential to have a great year.”
Willis said that he is hoping that this year can be the year that plans he has been working on come to fruition.
“We have several prospects that we are talking with,” Willis said. “I just got another call from a company. They aren’t necessarily interested in Darlington but they are interested in land; every requirement they had, we met. The people who are the professionals in this business, the site consultants, they tell me that what we’ve got in our inventory is very good and we have not had that before.”
That inventory includes property that is ready and waiting on a company to sign on the dotted line and start building on it.
“Darlington County now has two certified sites; we didn’t even have one certified site in 2012,” Willis said. “We’ve got some others that could develop into certified sites. A certified site has already been investigated. All the soil testing has been done, we’ve assured you that the property is clear and free, we’ve done a title search and we’ve done all of the environmental assessments and the Corp. of Engineer assessments. We have done all of the regulatory leg work to say ‘Here, if you want this, you can start on it tomorrow.”’
The certified sites are located on 52 and Hwy 340.
Part of being prepared for potential companies and industries that might come along is being educated on the needs of the industries you are trying to woo.
“We pretty well know what most industries need. These consultants tell us in no uncertain terms what they are looking for,” Willis said. “We are looking at different segments of the economy. For example, we are targeting agribusiness companies. Because of the interstate, we are targeting warehouses and distribution centers. We have a significant workforce in Darlington County that is trained in machine tool work so we are looking at the Aerospace Industry, the Automotive Industry.”
Having the valuable resources located in the Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology make Darlington County very interesting to companies.
“One of the companies I’m talking to if it weren’t for the SiMT, they probably wouldn’t be talking with us,” Willis said. “That capability, they just zeroed in on that.”
Willis said that he knows there was a significant amount of growth last year with existing industry in the area though he cannot give specific figures.
“They are pretty protective of that information so I can’t go out at the end of the year and say this is what the industries did this year, expanding and adding this many jobs,” Willis said. “I just don’t have that information.”
Though he could not comment on the specifics of any of the prospective companies, Willis said that his conversations have been extensive.
“We are pretty far along in our talks with these companies but one of the things about economic development is that it is slow,” Willis said. “I’ve got one company I’ve been working with almost two years; February will be two years. It is a lot of meetings, a lot of phone calls, a lot of conversations. At the same time, that opens the door for you with other companies too.”
