EDC reports hiked interest in second industrial park

  • YEDC Executive Director Terry Stokes discussed bids for improvements to future YEDC offices at 215 West Grand Ave. during Monday’s meeting.
    YEDC Executive Director Terry Stokes discussed bids for improvements to future YEDC offices at 215 West Grand Ave. during Monday’s meeting.

    Yoakum Economic Development Corporation (YEDC) Executive Director Terry Stokes reported increased interest from firms for requests for proposals (RFPs) concerning the Industrial Park 2 (IP2) project during the May 16 meeting.

     

    A total of 32 firms requested digital copies of the reissued RFP for environmental assessment and preliminary engineering services on IP2 and submitted questions by May 6, Stokes said during the Executive Director’s Report.

     

    This comes after 21 firms requested copies of the initial RFP with no follow-up responses. Stokes said after the meeting that the previous RFP may have struggled to attract interest because of a tight deadline.

     

    Respondents have until May 31 to submit technical proposals. Then, a review team will rank the responses.

     

    “Then we’ll proceed to negotiations with whoever comes out top-ranked,” said Stokes of the IP2 project. “We’ll keep those negotiations going until we reach a mutually satisfactory figure on both sides. If we don’t, then we’ll move on to whoever was second-ranked and so forth.”

     

    Later in the report, Stokes discussed statistics from Workforce Solutions concerning the labor shortage present throughout much of the country.

     

    “(The Golden Crescent is) just about back to an unemployment (rate) that was pre-COVID, but we have - like the rest of the nation - the strange anomaly that we have an incredible number of folks that are not returning to the job market,” Stokes said.

     

    A rise in entrepreneurship may be a significant variable contributing to fewer Americans returning to work. However, Stokes believed this would likely have little impact on the future labor market for prospective companies for IP2.

     

    “More people have started a business in the last two years in the United States than any other time in (its history)...,” he said. “But, the reality is that not everybody makes it (in entrepreneurship), so at some point, there will be an adjustment of folks returning back to the labor market.”