The City of Paducah is launching a new program, Crossroads for Growth, to share information about projects, people, and initiatives that are focused on growing Paducah and McCracken County. The program is hosted by Paducah Mayor George Bray.
Mayor Bray said, “Crossroads for Growth is a program to discuss the efforts we are making to grow the community.” Regarding the efforts by the City, County, and Greater Paducah Economic Development (GPED), Mayor Bray added, “I can speak for myself, we really have a team effort, everyone pounding the pavement, looking for projects that add jobs to this community. One thing for sure is that we all are staying focused on the goal, and that goal is to drive growth for this community.”
On this inaugural episode, Mayor Bray interviews GPED President/CEO Bruce Wilcox who has served in that role for nearly five years. Wilcox said that during that time GPED has announced 850 new jobs for the community which have created 550 indirect or induced jobs.
Wilcox shared GPED’s “elevator speech” to get prospective businesses interested in Paducah and McCracken County. Wilcox said, “Our elevator speech is good enough to get a business on the hook, but then we try to differentiate ourselves on what makes Paducah special or what makes us different. We like to talk about the four ‘R’s:’ rail, river, road, and runway.”
Regarding rail, Wilcox said that Paducah is one of only three communities in the Midwest that has rail service to the north, south, east, and west from a single location, the Triple Rail Site. Turning to river access, Paducah is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. Plus, approximately 80 percent of all inland marine traffic passes by the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers which is only about 40 miles away.
Other topics discussed during this episode include the following:
- Structure and funding of GPED.
- Importance of building relationships with site selector services.
- Incentive programs available to prospective businesses.
- Paducah and McCracken County’s advantages in attracting businesses (location, logistics, access to power, access to labor, and site readiness).
- Recent investments in site readiness.
In addition to airing on Government 11 (for Comcast subscribers), the episode also is online at paducahky.gov and the various social media outlets for the City of Paducah including Youtube and Facebook. Visit the City’s Youtube channel (paducahkygov) and become a subscriber to be notified of new videos.
Crossroads for Growth is produced through the television production facilities at West Kentucky Community and Technical College.
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