Grant EDC continues work on 16 projects

MOSES LAKE - It's been a busy year at the Grant County Economic Development Council.

Jonathan Smith, the council's incoming director, shared a list of 39 projects the council was working on during 2011. He listed the projects in code name.

They included business inquiries from a variety of companies preferring to work confidentially until they are ready to announce a relocation or expansion, he told a group of 52 people attending the council's luncheon.

The names included the titles of nano, charge, beverage, tri, cavalier and moose.

The list has since been narrowed down to 16 companies.

Currently Dell is under construction in Quincy and Sabey is expected to wrap up work in the next month. Vantage is now pouring concrete for its data center project.

In Warden, Pacific Coast Canola is under construction and ASPI Group's building by the Grant County International Airport is another new building.

In 2012, Grant County's data centers finish construction. New manufacturing and retail projects are expected to be announced, Smith said.

Rail, road, water, sewer, electric and fiber optic projects are on tap for next year.

Eventually the business-related projects move from construction to permanent jobs.

The EDC doesn't always handle so many projects per year, he said.

"You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince in economic development," he said.

The very basis of any community is jobs, he said. For example, Butte, Mont., shrunk considerably since its heydays as a mining town.

"What changed that is jobs," he said. "All those things depend on people in the community having jobs."

From when the country was founded, the percentage of agricultural jobs decreased from a high of 80 percent to 2 percent.

Manufacturers used to employ about 40 percent of Americans. The figure decreased to the teens, but the U.S. manufacturers employ more now than it did 10 years ago.

There is more to economic development than taking a company on a tour of Grant County, he noted.

An important tool in attracting companies is numbers about trends in economic vitality, such as housing, heath, agriculture and education.

Some figures can be found on the Grant County Trends website, at www.grantcountytrends.ewu.edu/.

Having the numbers helps a community address its deficiencies and promote its strengths.

Smith touched on the economic development history of Grant County and the importance of public utility districts, irrigation projects and ports.

"We've been able to stand on the shoulders of these giant economic development projects," Smith said.