ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT HELPED BY COOPERATION

Economic development can be a complicated business. In doing it the right way, certain physical requisites must be in place property, access, infrastructure and so on. Other aspects of this endeavor are more difficult to quantify but sometimes just as important. People make a difference and a willingness to work toward a common goal can make all the difference where economic progress is involved.

Members of the local business community should be heartened by a specific lesson in this, one delivered last week by an industrial newcomer impressed enough with Cape Girardeau and the area to make a significant investment here.

At a First Friday Coffee gathering, Harry Sanders, president of the German-based Mildenberger and Willing Manufacturing Co., explained the process that led his corporation to choose this area as a site for its new plant. Certainly, proximity played a role: among other things, the company makes packaging materials for Procter and Gamble Paper Products and it selected a site near that Cape Girardeau County manufacturing facility.

Still, M&W was not guided solely on that criterion. The initial list of possible locations for a new M&W plant included sites in 40 states. Cape Girardeau made the short list of sites in the exhaustive process and then turned in an extra bit of salesmanship that might have landed the factory. According to Sanders, M&W officials were making a tour of the sites two years ago; when they arrived in Cape Girardeau, the M&W team got not the perfunctory greeting from local civic officials, but a heartfelt welcome from a group of 30-40 citizens, all extending a hand of cooperation to the company. "We felt very much at home here," Sanders observed.

Indeed, M&W has found a home here. With it comes a $50 million manufacturing facility, an expected employee roll of 200 and a plant that will complement the area's largest employer, Procter and Gamble.

Sanders took pains to praise Chamber of Commerce President Bob Hendrix and chamber Economic Development Director Judy Moss and that praise is certainly due. They led an effort that not only spelled out the physical advantages of a Cape Girardeau plant location but called attention to an important intangible ... people. This area can have a leg up on economic development opportunities if a cooperative local spirit is in place. For that lesson, we have another reason to be thankful for M&W's presence here.