(Spencer)– Officials with the Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation say they’re encouraged with results of a four-year study of various programs they’ve been involved with. The organization’s CEO Kiley Miller says they’re especially pleased with what took place with their entrepreneur program…
“What we’ve done is we aggregated our results for the past four years and you know it’s been really, really strong. Let’s just talk entrepreneurship. Brian Dalziel and our team. He helped 100 new clients, more than 100 new clients over the past four years. They started 37 new businesses in our four counties. 37 businesses. That’s 212 jobs and $4.36 million raised.”
Miller says the recruitment and retention of businesses was also strong in the region over the past four years…
“We had 41 deals closed. Now what’s a deal? I mean it can vary. It can be something as simple as a big business needs a warehouse for year, we help them with that; to the more complicated projects like recruiting in a new company like the Safco’s of the world, like the Hyper Ceramics. But anyway 41 deals closed, 560 million plus invested and 540 jobs created.”
Miller says there was also substantial progress in housing the four-county area…
“We had more than 180 single family units or multi-family, so new housing through Corridor projects. The only thing I always want to say, the Corridor doesn’t create any jobs; the Corridor never swings a hammer and starts a new apartment building. We’re just trying to help with the schools, with the local government, with other businesses to clear the way. But our projects over the past four years have been very strong.”
Miller says they look forward to continuing to build on that over the next four years and well into the future.
