Mayor's Corner: Getting started as Jackson's mayor

This week I finished my second month as Mayor of Jackson. It has been a busy month with council meetings, the finalization of the plans for the water system improvements and bond issue and contact with many Jackson businesses and citizens. I have completed visits and tours with all the city departments and employees. These visits were very helpful to get a feel for our operations, the challenges our 120 employees face and their suggestions of how to improve our city services.

One of the most exciting parts of the last month have been the meetings and interaction with our regional government officials and organizations. Jackson's successful growth in the future will be greatly determined by our working closely with regional leaders on projects and initiatives. This month Jim Roach, Jackson's city administrator, and I had the opportunity to meet with the Mayor of Cape, Harry Rediger, and Tim Porch of Scott City and the city administrators of those cities, Scott Meyer and Ron Eskew. We have been able to share the status of each city and discuss important areas for cooperation going forward. In addition, I have been able to attend the Magnet Economic Development Board meeting and discuss the opportunities for industrial and business expansions.

The interaction with our county commissioners has been fruitful as we discuss the county and Jackson's common opportunities and issues.

A great example of cooperation was the ground-breaking for the Pepsi Mid America distribution center in the Cape Girardeau Business Park. This distribution center will provide 74 new jobs to our area. Many of these employees and their families will live and shop in Jackson. As Mayor Rediger said, this is a great addition for our community, which includes the cities of Cape and Jackson and Cape Girardeau County.

This is the result of cooperation over many years. Cooperation was needed to build the interchange on Interstate 55 at East Main Street and Southeast Missouri University Foundation involvement. The owners of Pepsi Mid America, the Crisp family, were the last piece that came together. The family's generosity over the years to Southeast Missouri State University built a strong relationship that resulted in their being the anchor tenant in the park. It is said "a high tide raises all ships." This is an example of how economic development projects in Jackson, Cape, Scott City or anywhere in the area benefit everyone by providing new jobs.

Closer to home, I have met with Charlie Glueck, president of the Jackson Chamber of Commerce, and Brian Gerau, director of the Chamber. We are discussing the specific goals that together Jackson and the Chamber can share concerning business development in Jackson.

Finally, I had a very informative session with Brian Tapp, director of outreach for the Douglas C. Greene Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Southeast Missouri State University. Brian's organization has been contracted by the Magnet organization and the Chamber of Commerce to do an extensive retail market analysis of Cape Girardeau County and the cities of Cape Girardeau and Jackson. The study, which will be completed by October, will be a very useful tool to analyze the present retail situation in the area as well as breaking down the information by individual market areas.

From this study, gaps can be identified for retail expansion. Opportunities can be presented to retail companies to encourage expansion into the area or for present retailers to add locations. This market analysis will be data driven and cover an extensive analysis of demographics, employment assessment, household spending, traffic counts, workers inflow and outflow, to name a few. It is difficult to set goals without good information; this study will provide a vast amount of data to set growth objectives and plans for retail in our area. I am looking forward to the results and recommendations from the study.

Jackson has many events in the next several months: Homecomers, the week of July 21-25, Oktoberfest October 10th, and the completion of the new Jackson Civic Center. I hope you will come out and enjoy our city of beautiful homes, parks, schools and churches.