go ponca

Weekly Update

03/21/08

PCDA TRUSTEES MET AT BIG FORK RANCH TODAY....to hold the 2008 Board retreat. The goal of this get together was to look at the strategic plan, add in the comments from the Town Hall held at the WFHAMD Economic Development Conference, throw in new developments and collectively say, "Let's go that way." With an economy that has added over 1,500 jobs in the last two years, the focus was on continuing that growth through ways to make Ponca City more attractive to people that might want to live here. Ergo, the conversation was on housing, (not enough) where the people taking the new jobs are living, (not here in many cases due to housing) what those people would need to live her, (besides housing), ways to continue to improve the community, (code enforcement of, uh, housing) how to market the community better, what industries to pursue, what's important over the next twelve months and so forth. The conversation will be turned into strategic plan speak with a goal of having measurable, tangible ways of building the economy. Joining PCDA today were Rich Cantillon of the Chamber of Commerce, Steve Crank from the North Central Oklahoma Workforce Board and hizzoner, Mayor Nicholson from the City of Ponca City.

EMPTY NEST...now that Bob has been adopted, PCDA has been experiencing empty nest syndrome. One of the items of discussions today was whether or not another spec building should be constructed. Spec buildings, please understand, are as much honey as they are the flower. Business look at community's for a variety of reasons. It is rare for a business to say that they want to be in community X and then look for a building. It's more likely that they saw the building on the web or something else and came to look at it, potentially taking that building or finding something than suited them even more. So patience, as always, is a virtue.

COMP PLAN FOR PONCA CITY...is being proposed by the city to establish a master plan for the future. PCDA has been invited to sit in on several of the meetings in order to insure that the economic development plan and the city's plan are in sync.

DATA, DATA AND MORE DATA...PCDA is getting a lot of reports from people outside of Ponca City that data available to them on the web about Ponca City is unfavorable. Sort of like the barber shop talk that still judges Ponca only through the prism of one company. It's not that the data on the PCDA, Chamber or City web sites are bad, (although all three need some work) it's that people who Google Ponca City are being ending up on web sites with old and bewildering data. Some of the reports are about the lose of thousands of jobs, (Ponca City has more jobs today than at any point is our history with the exception of 2001 and we're only 100 jobs behind that and growing) crime rate, (huh?) companies leaving, (huh?) you get the picture. That's its not true is not the point. PCDA Trustees directed the PCDA staff to get together with people who have Ponca City web sites and make the fresh, available and, by the way, accurate data available to them so that a real image of the community emerges.

Ponca City Development Authority. 102 S. Fifth Street, Ste. 3, Ponca City, OK 74601

580.765.7070/580.765.0969-fax, email dmyers@goponca.com, www.goponca.com