On this episode of the Post Podcast, Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams shares area economic updates.
Transcript:
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doug071522
Fri, 7/15 4:54PM • 13:54
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
businesses, community, recruitment, situation, haze, ellis county, people, building, housing, recruit, downtown, square foot, couple, challenges, find, dealt, pretty, cost, workforce, area
SPEAKERS
James Bell, Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
James Bell
Business Development and recruitment is an ongoing process in Ellis County. From Grow Hays, Executive Director Doug Williams shares with us some of the latest developments here in the area, on this episode of the Post Podcast.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
We're at kind of in the dog days of summer here where everybody's just trying to figure out how to stay cool. We continue to work on different things and have different projects going whether it be our, our microfactory, or housing development, or our you know, our retail recruitment efforts.
James Bell
Yet, I want to talk about that. Because one of the big things that's happened I think down to your organization this year, as you've brought extra staff in, you've got a couple of people now working for you that that's kind of their whole thing is is bringing in or analyzing and trying to recruit some of these businesses that hazing the the greater Ellis County region neat.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
It is we brought on two people this year, David Klingon came on in January. And his his focus is business recruitment, as well as retaining the businesses we have. And in James Robin joined us in June. And he's focused on business development, which is primarily entrepreneurship, starting up new businesses, as well as special projects, because we've got a couple of, you know, the microfactory, and housing developments and things that we're, we're working on, and we were stretched pretty thin. So we've got more resource now. And it's been really, it's been really good, we've, we've got a lot of things going. I wish I could point my finger at a couple of things say they're all done. But there are a lot of things in the works. So now we've got adequate resource to dedicate towards getting some things like that done.
James Bell
Love it. And as I say we've we've seen some businesses come into a haze in Ellis County into the last or in the last six months or so. And you know, that development seems to continue. One of the things we were chit chatting about before we got on was the need for space, though, which I thought was really interesting, because you brought up a good point, when you really come down to it, there's not a lot of available properties for a large big box retailer to come in.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Well, there really isn't, you know, and one of the things that large big box retailers look for particularly in small markets as they look for a second or third generation facility. Because the cost of constructing a new facility is just way too much in a community like ours. land prices on North vine are are quite high. And construction cost. Obviously we all know how high those are. And so the ability to come in build a new location and start up from scratch is a much different financial equation than it is to find a 20 3040 year old building and occupy it considerably different. My daughter in law who was from Pittsburgh, Kansas, she sent me a text last night and she said that Pittsburgh, Kansas is getting the marshals and then we'd love to have marshals in Hays. But they're going in at old goodies store, which is 2030 years old.
James Bell
And for those maybe younger folks goodies sold music, I think right? I think that's right. Yeah, I barely remember they kind
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
of like Hastings was here. Yeah. You know, an entertainment type store selling, renting out DVDs and selling what used to be the music the way we used to buy CDs or veers oldest may vinyl, or eight tracks, but they when they're going in that location and and just to give an example of the difference in what the rental situation might be those those buildings rent by the square foot, typically on an annual basis. So if you've got, let's just say 10,000 square feet, and it rents for $4 a square foot that's 40 $40,000 a year. Well, a new a new build would cost $20 A square foot or $200,000 a year. So it's considerably different. And so in some ways, we're we're victims of our own success and the fact that we don't have many empty buildings. And as a consequence it it's a different game we have to play to recruit people into the community.
James Bell
Yeah, absolutely. I know. This was one of the things that we talked about with the downtown Howie's Development Corporation. As they were working to kind of rebuild downtown and get more businesses that they had the same problem, they're virtually full.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
They are it's it's almost impossible to find a spot downtown. I know. We had a lady in the office here a few weeks ago that's going to be open in another business downtown. And it was not easy for her to find a spot. I mean, she had to look and and there's only one or two spots and one of them I think has some major structural issues that have to be dealt with. So that kind of takes that
James Bell
out of you.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
That's that's no fun when you hover the mouse and dealing with that. So until those are dealt with that that location is not going to work. So space is a big issue and building it does not Not an easy thing to do, it's not a lot unlike housing, you know, the cost to build housing right now is so high that it becomes a challenge to construct homes that are affordable. And that can fall into the right price range to meet a workforces needs.
James Bell
And it's not like somebody can just put up a building and have a business come in, because that cost of that piece is going to get in the way, even if someone else is trying to do that as a commercial venture. Right?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Pretty, you rarely see speculative construction of retail space, from the standpoint of a large building. Now we do have some space in front of the Hilton Garden Inn that is yet to be occupied, I know there's at least two or three different things going on there. And I think we'll see some activity in that spot pretty quick, with a couple of those slots being filled. But 2030 40,000 square feet, that's a that's a pretty risky venture to go out there and just put up a building, when you're going to pay anywhere from seven to $20 a square foot for the land. So if you equate that into the cost per acre, that's 300,000 to 800,000 per acre for commercial land, and then you put up a building that's going to cost 100 $250 A square foot, it just nobody's going to do that. On a if you build it, they will come situation in today's environment.
James Bell
So I'm curious, you know, what do you guys do down there grow haze to help alleviate the situation?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Well, we we try and work with existing property owners as well as the local government entities to find incentives that can bridge that gap. You know, the CID, which is a community investment incentive district allows a retailer to add sales tax to the current rate, and that that extra one to 2% that they charge can go back towards their costs associated with building a building or doing that kind of thing. So there's one at the mall, a 1%. Cid, so everything that you buy at the mall, has 1% added to it, which goes, you know, they've agreed to put towards the facility parking lot, interior improvements and that kind of thing. Same thing can be done with a new construction project. And that helps bridge that gap. But it's difficult, you know that those it's a challenging situation, there's only so many tools in the tools in the toolkit and, and it's a challenge to kind of make that all work. And that's, that's why retail development is pretty slow. Not to mention, the challenges that retail has overall. With online being so prevalent, and bricks and mortar being so expensive. The business models for retailers is changing considerably. And so that presents challenges to there just aren't that many that are looking to expand.
James Bell
You know, from a buyer perspective, if you want to support local, and you're in that situation where you can't find what you need. There isn't a retail shop locally that does that. What's the best option? How do people, you know, make the best decision for the local community? Well, or is there a good solution?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
It's a difficult solution. I mean, they if you can't find what you need or want locally, your choices are to go someplace else and get it or open up Amazon and order
James Bell
- We all know Amazon is you know, in terms of community support, not it's not a community partner there. They don't do they rarely pay taxes, they're just starting to get to where they're forced to do that. So that's kind of the bigger pieces like how do those how do we find businesses that support what we're trying to do here in Hays, Kansas or anybody ever in our listening area?
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Well, we certainly feel that there are certain businesses where there is a sufficient market here that they could do well here. You know, I mentioned Marshalls in Pittsburgh, I think Marshalls or TJ Maxx, something like that would do would do well here. So we have to, and we're talking to these people all the time. And I think a lot of people think well, you just call them up and they just come here, that's that's really not the case. They know a great deal about our community already. And they have certain communities on their radar for expansion. And if you mitt meet these criteria, which are population numbers, the moderate income numbers, you know, all of those pull factor, which we have a very good pull factor, we have a wide trade area. They know all that. So they can plug that in and they can they can pretty much nail it on what their sales are going to be in a market like ours. So then it comes to what are our operating expenses going to be can we get our operating expenses to a level that make it work for us in that market. And then the last piece of the puzzle, which is a serious problem is workforce. Somebody comes down they need 100 workers. That's, that's a tough nut to crack because they aren't available. And so where are they going to come from? You're going to steal them from those existing businesses. And that's a difficult situation as well. So lots of challenges out there right now. But you just got to keep plugging.
James Bell
Yeah, and I know we you mentioned, we do talk about this quite a bit that the housing piece of this, there is some activity there that is looking to help that situation, at least in the immediate future, right, we've got some apartment buildings that are kind of plans are coming together? Well, there are,
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
we've got an apartment complex, it's been approved at the corner of fourth and Fort 36 units over the next couple of years. We've had, we had a couple of developers in town this week, that are considering apartment complexes in the community, and we and we need them. We've got single family homes, obviously, in the Tallgrass addition, that are going up. And that's, that helps. So the more inventory we can build, the better. We really believe that, you know, it is the old saying, If you build it, they will come. We believe that our community has so much going for it. And if we can resolve the housing situation, a lot of people will choose to locate here. And that will obviously bolster the workforce and help us recruit some other businesses.
James Bell
You know, I know there's no magic lever on any of this. And it's not like you're down there like, oh, we need a little bit more housing a little bit more retail, a little bit more restaurants. There's no way to do that. But you know, I'm curious, like, how do you how do you come to the conclusions? Or the numbers, I guess, is the real question to kind of keep it all in check. Because you know, you don't want too many workers to move into haze, you don't want to too few, you need to right spot for the business recruitment and all that. And it all kind of seems like it works together quite a bit.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
Where it is all a balancing act, you know, I think we don't have the issues that some communities have associated with growth. We have had growth, but it's been slow, it's been steady, some of that is limited by our water capacity. You know, there are certain types of industry that we can't recruit because of the water capacity. That's a blessing in some ways and a curse in others. It just depends. But it is a fine balance. And it's never, ever going to be in sync, you know, there's always going to be parts that are that are doing well at a given time and in parts that aren't doing well. But a lot of a lot of what we are involved with now, I believe is not necessarily the recruitment of business. Yes, we do that. But the recruitment of people is just as important. There are literally millions of Americans that are looking to migrate away from metropolitan areas. They're expensive. We think housing is expensive here, we have no clue, no clue whatsoever. And there are millions of people that are looking to get out of the rat race, the traffic, the costs, the crime and that kind of thing. And we think we've got a great story. But we have to tell them, you know, they have to know about us. And that's part of what our imagined Ellis County group is, is to get this word out. We've got a initiative going on where we are getting our message out to the eastern slope of Colorado, we think that's a great area to prospect in and we've got the videos that we're showing them about people testimonials, basically talking about the quality of life here and that kind of thing. So recruiting people is just as important to us as pretty business at this point.
James Bell
Absolutely. And I'm sure you're gonna continue to help out with that.
Grow Hays executive director Doug Williams
We'll do everything we can
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