Chamber President touts city website, job creation
Some workforce issues, Luther tells Quorum Court
The city’s new website, El Dorado’s role in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and local job creation were just a few of the highlights El Dorado-Union County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Bill Luther covered when he made a presentation to the county Quorum Court last week on local economic development efforts.
Union County contributes $30,000 annually to the Chamber, while the City of El Dorado adds $445,000 to the Chamber budget and the El Dorado Development Corporation, $13,333. The remainder of the Chamber’s funding comes from members and other revenue-generating components of the Chamber’s work.
The county’s economic development agreement with the Chamber includes a provision that the Chamber CEO periodically update the Quorum Court on economic development efforts, and last Thursday, Luther gave Justices of the Peace a look at what he and other Chamber employees have been up to lately.
One major highlight was the city’s new website, which Luther said would improve El Dorado and Union County’s ability to attract potential investors. Included in information Luther provided to JPs was a side-by-side comparison of the two websites.
“The bottom picture is the new website, which is a whole lot easier and friendlier to use. You can see, the top one (old website) was broken. People would try to search on it and it would come back with an error,” Luther said.
So far in 2023, the city website – goeldorado.com – has already had 37% of the number of visitors the site had in the first quarter of 2021. The site rolled out on Jan. 19, Luther said.
The economic development website the Chamber previously maintained, groweldorado.com, now links back to the city site, where residents, visitors and investors can find information ranging from an upcoming event calendar to workforce and business incentive data.
Looking back at 2022, Luther said the Chamber supported 19 projects in partnership with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, including one forest products and one chemical industry project that are both now complete. Kaitlyn Ridgon, economic development project manager, specified that an expansion at the Resolute Forest Products mill and the opening of the Continental Carbonics plant were completed last year with the AEDC’s help.
“In 2022, there were – we can talk about this now – the majority of our time was spent on two projects. One of those projects, as of last month, we are one of the finalists in three states. We’re competing with Mississippi and competing with Texas,” Luther said. “This is a major, global forest products company. It will have a $300 million investment, 150-200 full-time jobs with an average wage of $24 an hour.”
Luther said the Chamber would find out in the next three to six months whether El Dorado is selected as the
company’s new site. After that, it will take about five years to construct the plant and begin operations, he said, and a Phase II project for the company will involve another $100 million investment and produce approximately 75 additional jobs.
Ten other AEDC-incentivized projects are still in the works.
Additionally, the Chamber supported 25 local projects without AEDC involvement last year, Luther said. One restaurant project – Whataburger – was completed. Twenty-three other projects are still currently in the works, according to information Luther provided.
“The biggest handicap – we’ve got six restaurants that want to come to our town, come to Union County, but they can’t find employees, people suitable to manage them,” Luther said. “They can’t find managers, and it’s a real, real difficult situation.”
District 6 JP Cecil Polk asked whether the restaurants that have considered locating in El Dorado were sit-down or fast food eateries.
“I’m hearing a lot of – out in the public – people will say, ‘You don’t have enough restaurants,’ ‘There’s no places to eat,’” Polk said. “We need more restaurants, not fast food restaurants.”
Luther said many of the prospects were sit-down restaurants, including Rock N’ Roll Sushi, which he said considered locating on the Square until the company couldn’t find a manager.
District 3 JP Greg Harrison asked whether South Arkansas Community College’s culinary program might be a workforce boon for restaurants, but Chamber Board President Greg Withrow said the program doesn’t address the skills gap impeding restaurants.
Luther said altogether, new business openings and existing industries’ expansion created about 258 new jobs in Union County in 2022.
The county ended the year at 4.6% unemployment, according to data from the Federal Reserve, and Luther said the jobless rate was at its lowest since 2004 in November, when it hit 4.3%.
The Chamber held more ribbon cuttings in 2022 than ever before, including 16 for new businesses, seven for existing industry expansions, two for businesses that moved locations, two for new Chamber members, three for businesses under new ownership and two groundbreakings, making 32 altogether.
Rigdon, the Chamber project manager, said the Chamber’s goals for 2023 are to bring more jobs and opportunities to Union County.
“We have 10 active projects with the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, which are primarily industry projects. We are hoping to have some exciting industry announcements this year,” she said in an email Tuesday. “Quality of life is also an important part of any community, so having places where families can go is definitely a priority. We are currently working on achieving more entertainment options for families in our community.
“We are looking forward to 2023 and hope that we can help bring new and exciting opportunities for our community,” she concluded.