Let’s talk about economic development

Dur­ing the elec­tion year, you hear a lot of talk about eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. And for good rea­son, good-pay­ing jobs are not as plen­ti­ful as we’d like them to be, so bring­ing in new indus­tries to our com­mu­ni­ties is crit­i­cal. It’s crit­i­cal not only to our finan­cial well-being, but also to local cul­ture and our chil­dren’s future.

Here at York Elec­tric, we talk about eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment a lot, too. For­tu­nate­ly, that talk has revolved around suc­cess sto­ries, such as the Lash Group, a health­care con­sult­ing firm, and soon-to-open LPL Finan­cial Car­oli­nas to Fort Mill in the Kings­ley Busi­ness Park. These two com­pa­nies com­bined will bring more than 5,000 jobs to our area, and your coop­er­a­tive is proud to serve them.

We are not too hum­ble to claim that your coop­er­a­tive played an impor­tant role in bring­ing these invest­ments, worth near­ly $240 mil­lion, to our area. We worked close­ly with the local devel­op­ment boards in pro­vid­ing the infra­struc­ture to attract and assist these com­pa­nies. We also part­nered with the South Car­oli­na Pow­er Team, an eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment group focused on recruit­ing and retain­ing indus­tries for the state’s elec­tric coop­er­a­tives.

Our invest­ments in these projects and oth­ers are guar­an­teed a return. Pri­mar­i­ly, it ful­fills the mis­sion to improve your qual­i­ty of life by pro­vid­ing eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties. It also ful­fills one of the Sev­en Coop­er­a­tive Prin­ci­ples, Con­cern for Com­mu­ni­ty. But more direct­ly, it pro­vides our sys­tem with a large base load, allow­ing us to spread out oper­at­ing costs. The more indus­tri­al and large com­mer­cial loads we have, the less our res­i­den­tial mem­bers have to shoul­der the bur­den of our pow­er costs.

Of course, we don’t intend to stop at these suc­cess­es. Right now, our area is a hotbed of indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial activ­i­ty, and we intend to bring as much of it onto our lines as we can. Future suc­cess­es through­out our ser­vice area will occur because of efforts we’re mak­ing toward improv­ing our reli­a­bil­i­ty and infra­struc­ture. We’ll also be able to show the strong rela­tion­ships we’ve built with our indus­tri­al and large com­mer­cial mem­bers.

And we’ll con­tin­ue to make our ter­ri­to­ry attrac­tive to poten­tial indus­tries. Because of our part­ner­ships with the South Car­oli­na Pow­er Team and San­tee Coop­er, the state-owned gen­er­a­tion util­i­ty, we’ve been able to help finance two spec­u­la­tive build­ings. The 50,000-square-foot spec­u­la­tive build­ing in Fort Mill near the inter­sec­tion of High­way 160 and I‑77 close to Shut­ter­fly was recent­ly leased to Cataw­ba Enter­pris­es, a freight-for­ward­ing com­pa­ny. Also, con­struc­tion is under­way on a 40,000- square-foot spec­u­la­tive build­ing locat­ed in our East York Indus­tri­al Park in York behind MacLean Pow­er Sys­tems. It is expect­ed to entice more new indus­try and jobs our way in the near future.

Big invest­ments in our com­mu­ni­ties, bet­ter-pay­ing jobs for our citizens—that’s the kind of talk we like to hear.

 

Relat­ed Top­ics:
Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment