Known for its friendly environment, tight-knit community, outdoor recreational opportunities and rich history, Fulton County is ready to grow. Fulton Economic Development Corporation Director Michael Ladd, is ready to help do just that after taking over his new position in February.
Ladd said over the past dozen years or so, nearly $3.3 million in federal and state grants have been given in Fulton County that could have otherwise gone elsewhere had it not been for FEDCO. Over $383,000 of USDA grants were also awarded to the city and county since 2011. With threats of FEDCO being taken out in the past, Ladd said he plans on keeping the ball rolling economically to ensure its worth for our community.
With new ideas up his sleeve, Ladd hopes to market information about buildings and places open and available for sale or rent in the area, like the Blacketor Industrial Park, to bring more business to Rochester. Already starting to showcase the area, Ladd, in March, brought two developers from Clark County to town to show them what the city of Rochester had to offer and plans to do so more throughout the county as time goes on.
Over the past two months, Ladd has observed a a need in the community for more modern, exclusive place for industries to flow in. With additional upgrading on buildings and places that already exsist within the community, Ladd's experience with marketing is key.
It's the additional upgrades, however, that Ladd is waiting on before he can put a hook on the worm for outside marketing. The main problem, Ladd said, is businesses larger cities have a hard time looking at Rochester for a potential site, when nothing is available immediate production. Not only does the current housing crisis hurt business, by not being able to provide housing for their employees, there is also no 'shovel-ready' site for the buildings here to get started with water, sewer, utilities and more.
Ladd said some of this is being worked on, but there isn't much movement. Without a working relationship between various groups within the county, business attraction for the area will continue to be an impossible task. He stressed that those that can step up and provide the necessary infrastructure and shovel ready sites will lead our growth and success the most. By looking at the future, and decades down the road, Ladd hopes leaders are wanting to create a community that their children and grandchidren will want to live in and help grow as well.
While Ladd realizes that Rome wasn't built in a day, he does believe further teamwork to make things come together will mean long in coming successes for companies here in the future. Ladd used past experiences from his time in Marion, where he said it took nearly five years of negotiating with Dunham Sports before the company settled on its current site for its new warehouse.
With high hopes for the future, Ladd also has some fears and says Fulton County is decades behind when it comes to engaging in economic development. Ladd compared our start in 2011 to the surrounding counties who began development in the 1950s, and continue to prepare today for new residents and companies to move in a few years from now. He said many of these counties are preparing for the ripple effect that Kokomo's growth has produced over the decades. Ladd said, as of right now, if we don't take action and work together as a whole for the community, the ripple effect will stop at Fulton County.
Still new to the area, Ladd has a fresh outlook for Rochester and change for the future, hoping to see it grow as much as the areas have that he's worked in before. The only thing that lacks is teamwork.
He plans to continue to fight for that teamwork. Pushing exsisting programs, helping to form new partnerships between public and private sectors, and meet the needs of the community, instead of the agendas of local leaders, Ladd hopes as better relationships grow, so does the county.
