Market Analysis Phase Nearing Completion for Bel Aire Industrial Park

Recently, an article was written in the Wichita Eagle highlighting the lack of business or industrial sites and closing funds that are at the disposal of local economic development officials, including the Greater Wichita Economic Development Corporation. (link) The consultant in the article, Jay Garner, was spot on with his assessment. Local officials are handcuffed by few shovel ready sites, little to no public support for increased taxes to fund both marketing and recruiting resources or infrastructure improvements and they have no closing fund available to close deals to compete with other regions outside of the state. Further, the state of Kansas currently does not have a formal site certification program that would highlight shovel ready sites and help make them more marketable. Recently I provided my analysis of the hard part, developing a plan to turn the ship and start gaining positive momentum.

However, there is a bright spot. One of the most attractive sites in Sedgwick County is the 800+ acres being developed by the City of Bel Aire. Law Kingdon and my firm, TranSystems began the study in January of this year and are close to completing the first two phases, site assessment and market assessment. On Tuesday night, February 21, Jeff Best with Law-Kingdon Architects and myself will present to the Bel Aire City Council a status update of those first two phases. The City of Bel Aire should be congratulated on their proactiveness in trying to move forward to develop their park. There are many opportunities in the South Central Kansas region to seize in terms of assets that attract site selectors. Phase 2 of our project, the market assessment phase, is starting to yield some very interesting results, some of which you would expect, the others came from an examination of industry growth, local market conditions, cost of real estate and the type of industry that would be a good "fit" for the City of Bel Aire.

I am excited to share those results here with my faithful Latitudes readers as soon as we share them with our client. Stay tuned, I truly believe this region is finally gaining the political momentum it needs to create quality jobs and attract quality industries.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or need any help. You can reach me at jrlackey@transystems.com!

Have a great one!