ACDC may become as familiar locally to adults as the band of that name is to hard-rock fans.
Iola Industries wants to expand its reach to include all in the county, as it retools its approach to wooing industry, John McRae, Iola Industries president, told Humboldt councilmen Monday night.
Allen County Development Corporation — abbreviated ACDC — is a name that is being considered, McRae said, “with apologies to the band.”
“We (Iola Industries) have been doing some soul-searching,” McRae said. “The world is changing and we haven’t.”
For years, and with some very pronounced successes, Iola Industries was poised to react whenever the Kansas Department of Commerce or a site locator came calling. Now, he said, “we need to go after industry.”
Iola Industries has contracted with Stan Grigsby, an economic development specialist with “great contacts,” for six months — on the Iola group’s nickel — to define how locals can have a better chance of attracting jobs.
“He will evaluate what we have to offer in Allen County, not just Iola,” McRae said. “Iola doesn’t have rail, but Humboldt does, for example. LaHarpe, has high-speed Internet,” through fiber optic cable installed by LaHarpe Telephone.
“We have assets,” in Allen County and its cities, “that haven’t been evaluated, some that we don’t even realize we have,” he said.
Once an inventory of assets is in hand, the next step is to market them — electronically.
“Through the Internet,” McRae said, “That’s how businesses and industries find communities now.”
They know about a community and what it has to offer before the community is aware of any interest in it, he said.
Having a local website with links to every conceivable asset that would interest a company is essential, McRae added.
“We hope to have a findable presence on the Internet soon, and we want you (Humboldt) and all of the county to be there,” he said.
The third stick in the bundle is a decidedly positive asset of Allen County, its people, he said, people who are willing and able to provide a work force.
McRAE NOTED that a company had whittled 17 locations to seven, including one in Allen County, had representatives here last Thursday. They toured a site, “looked it over very closely, took a lot of notes,” McRae said.
Next on the company’s agenda is to pare possible sites to two. Wherever it locates, the company will bring 150 good-paying jobs and a relationship to the aero-space industry, he said.
Humboldt Council members were responsive.
“We can’t have tunnel vision,” said Vada Aikins. “We have to work together.”
Sunny Shreve agreed and wondered aloud, “Where do we go next?”
“Hopefully we’ll have a non-profit formed within a year to represent all of the county,” McRae said. “We don’t want to hire an economic development director to sit and wait for a business to appear, but a consultant for a specific area and time.”
The intent, he said, was to be aggressive in going after jobs rather than waiting for them to come to Allen County.
McRae told Mayor Nobby Davis that Grigsby would be in touch with him and City Administrator Larry Tucker to look into Humboldt’s assets, which then will be put in with those of Iola and other cities to make the county as a whole an attractive package.
Eventually, financial support of recruitment efforts will go beyond just Iola Industries.
McRae and several in Humboldt think the ideal approach, given that all residents are taxpayers, would be Allen County.
County commissioners have been approached, but have made no commitments.
