North Iowa Corridor EDC president says economic development in the area “incredibly positive”

CLEAR LAKE — The annual meeting of the North Iowa Corridor Economic Development Corporation took place on Thursday at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

EDC president and CEO Chad Schreck says the overview of economic development in the area is incredibly positive.  “A couple of weeks ago, we had a really fun public event with the New Energy Freedom project. It’s a $350 million investment into our community. That’s obviously a great development project in the works with new job creation, new investment. It’s going to be a couple of years in the works, but it’s an exciting project. It’s really kind of a harbinger of other great things to come. We have a few things lined up behind that that could really add to that story as well in the biofuels sector and industry for us.”

Schreck says the area continues to see incredible housing development in the area with a number of developers.   “When I counted most recently, this year ahead we should have at least 150 housing units potentially in development, so a lot of great things in the housing side.”

Schreck says lead activity in recruiting new potential companies to the area continues to be strong.  “In the last couple of months alone, we’ve had three or four different companies come to visit to look at sites and have direct conversations about project activity here in the city or north Iowa. So incredible, incredible opportunities, very bullish on what we have ahead.”

One of the things Schreck is always watching is the national and global economy, which he says there’s a lot of potential issues ahead.  “We can’t sugar coat that. There’s high interest rates, high inflation costs on construction materials and things of that nature that we’re watching. We continue to see our unemployment rates stay incredibly low, and we continue to look for workforce, and that’s going to continue to be a huge focus area of ours.  We have a new employee who that’s her 100% focus, working with our schools and business partners, trying to build that pipeline of talent both locally with our homegrown talent as well as how we recruit and attract them.”

Schreck made his comments during an appearance on the “Ask the Mayor” program on AM-1300 KGLO earlier this week. You can listen back to more of his comments by heading to the “Ask the Mayor” archive section on the main page of this website.