Northwest Arkansas is making it seem so simple.
Health-care data. Solar energy. Cookie dough.
Name an industry, and it is a safe bet the region is finding a way to contribute. A reminder of this came last week thanks to good economic news out of Rogers, Fayetteville and Springdale. (Meanwhile, Bentonville was just up there doing its thing as a retail giant with a nationally recognized art museum. No big deal.)
Cyd King reported in Tuesday’s edition that Serco was looking to hire an additional 1,100 people for its Rogers processing center. The company had already hired 700 folks at $10-$13 per hour to help sort data related to the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
We got word on Wednesday from John Magsam that the U.S. Department of Energy awarded a $500,000 SunShot Initiative grant to Silicon Solar, a startup from the University of Arkansas. Silicon Solar’s work has drawn international interest and is being hailed as a potential game-changer in the field of renewable energy.
A day later came the story that South Coast Bakery Co. was investing $8.7 million to double its operations and hire 150 people within the next three years, at an average of $25 an hour, in Springdale. Like me, you might not have known about South Coast this time last week, but you had likely heard of a few of the California-based company’s clients: Sam’s Club, Mrs. Fields and Panera Bread.
This was, even by the thriving region’s standards, a heckuva week. And if we really want to get technical, it wasn’t even a full week. All the news came in a span of about 72 hours.
Impressive, especially when you consider the current climate.
Job growth, you may have heard, is relatively flat state and nation-wide. According to an economic indicators chart that recently ran in this section, the unemployment rate in Arkansas has hovered around 7.4 percent the past four months. Nationally, the figure has been between 7.3 percent and 7.6 percent since May.
For Northwest Arkansas?It’s at 5.4 percent, a figure that leads the state’s metropolitan statistical areas by a significant margin.
What is especially encouraging for Benton, Washington and the other counties in the NWA MSA, is that this is hardly a one-time thing. Plus, last week illustrates just how diverse the success is.
Retail, trucking and poultry are just part of what we’re doing up here.
A buddy who works for a local organization that helps foster growth in the region reminded me last week that we saw a similar run of good news in April. That particular three-day stretch included local companies securing nearly $100 million in investment funding.
Collective Bias, the Bentonville-based social shopper marketing firm, received $10.5 million from Updata Partners in Washington, D.C. Fayetteville’s Acumen Brands Inc., an e-commerce company, hauled in $83 million in growth equity from General Atlantic. Field Agent, a data collection operation, was awarded $2.5 million from Kansas City’s Five Elms Capital.
These bursts of economic development news make the process look much easier than it is. We know better. Months, sometimes years, of work go into making the process look so effortless.
Landing South Coast, which projects $85 million in annual revenue once it’s producing cookie dough in Springdale, is a great example of the collaborated effort needed to get jobs here. City leaders, Chamber of Commerce employees and state officials coordinated for nearly a year to get a deal done with South Coast.
As Gov. Mike Beebe pointed out at the South Coast announcement, landing the company was worth the effort. Benefits of adding 150 new jobs to the area extend beyond the employees who will make an average of $25 per hour. Thousands in the region will be affected if these new ventures succeed, creating more interest and generating more opportunity.
Simply put, this is what success breeding success looks like.
If you have a tip, call Chris Bahn at (479) 365-2972 or email him at cbahn@nwaonline.com
Business, Pages 68 on 10/27/2013