YEAR END DEVELOPMENT REPORT

December  2005

Montgomery County is in a very good economic position to begin 2006. We have over 100 million dollars in new Industrial projects that will be in full construction next year and in operation by the end of 2006. Not only do we have several new jobs coming to our community, they are good jobs with well established companies.

The Demeter Ethanol plant in Linden is the biggest economic development project since Nucor Steel and will also give a financial boost to our agricultural businesses. Dubose Manufacturing, locating on the Nucor Road Industrial Corridor, is our newest industry in the steel cluster.  The County is building the infrastructure needed along the corridor to set the stage for future business developments. 

Many of our current Industries are expanding or improving their companies to stay competitive in the new global economy. As a nation we are facing some of our greatest economic challenges in some time and many of our industries are doing a great job adapting to the new business landscape. There is no getting around the fact that Americans will need to work smarter if we are going to continually improve our quality of life.  

Education after high school is no longer an option to entering the workforce. As our manufacturers advance their plants to compete they will need a skilled reliable workforce. Our schools, industries and Montgomery County Economic Development (MCED) are working together to raise the levels of education and skills in Montgomery County. Several years ago the MCED Board recognized these challenges and began to fund the Ivy Tech facility that will now blossom into our own Ivy Tech Community College of Crawfordsville.           

We also developed SkillsNet, a training initiative that brought in over $200,000 in training grants to our local industries over the last two years. Our School to Career Committee in cooperation with CHS has developed a progressive credit based Careers in Manufacturing course in the High School next year.  Workplace ethics and WorKeys will be components of this exciting new program.

These long term educational goals do not address the immediate critical skills needs our industries are experiencing.  As an answer to the more current challenges MCED will be implementing our newest initiative, project “Bright Future”. This is a two year marketing campaign to attract a skilled reliable workforce to our industries and community.  

 We are fortunate enough to have many diverse manufacturing careers in our community and our industries will not be able to expand here without adequate human resources. Our goal is to increase the County population by 2,000 over the next 5 years which is twice as high as census estimates. This creates a very positive economic impact on our retail, service, realty businesses and schools which will result in a reduction of individual tax burden by broadening the tax base. 

Not all the news for our community businesses is good, for the first time ever GM, Ford and Chrysler will have less than 50% of the automobile market share in this country. The automotive industry overall is growing but we have not been able for many reasons to compete effectively with the new big three: Toyota, Honda and Nissan. 

 Business is always in cycles and our community may be the victim of what this trend has meant to one of our employers, Raybestos.  Our purpose for bringing in new industries is to create a stabilization effect on our local economy as these kinds of challenges develop.

Montgomery County Economic Development devotes around 80% of our time to retention efforts and supporting the industries that are already here.  We initiate and assist companies with expansion incentives, the Presidents Club, Job fairs and our progressive workforce development programs. The county agribusiness is one of the best in the state and will only improve with the new ethanol plant.  MCED is implementing new ways to support this important asset by involving all county communities in the planning process.

Bill Henderson
MCED Executive Director