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Economic Outlook

Jeff Rea’s Blog Post (Episode 1503)

October 22, 2019
Author Jeff Rea

About Jeff

Jeff Rea is currently the President & CEO of the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce. Jeff has over 20 years of executive leadership experience in our region while working in areas such as Economic Development, Business Development, City Planning, Marketing, and Local Government. Jeff has a degree from Campbell University in Buies Creek, NC and executive management continuing education work at the University of Notre Dame.

Welcome to my blog post related to our taping on our show about Growing Marshall County. I sure appreciate your support of WNIT, Public Television (PBS), and our show.

If you are not familiar with the show, we hope you’ll make plans to join us each week as we bring you stories about the people, companies and communities driving economic growth in our region! If you want to take a look at some of our previous shows, their available at www.wnit.org/economicoutlook.

Marshall County is one of the smallest counties in our region, but it has some big projects moving forward. We wanted to take a closer look some companies making big investments in that area and we wanted to dive into why they chose Marshall County.

For that discussion, we called upon friend of the show Jerry Chavez, President & CEO of the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation. Jerry has joined me several times in the past on the show to talk about important projects in his part of the region. Jerry is a real pro, with a lot of experience doing economic development, he’s one of the best around. Jerry has worked in economic development for 18 years, previously working in North Dakota, Arizona, and Montana. Jerry began working for the MCEDC in spring 2014. 

Jerry is responsible for the development of new strategies to attract new businesses, helping existing business with their growth plans and improving the business climate.

Jerry shared insight on several key projects advancing. Those included a Chinese-American startup, a wheel manufacturer, that has bought the old Bay Valley Pickle warehouse in Plymouth; Pretzels Inc., a snack food manufacturer currently growing rapidly, and the start-up that will soon occupy and expand the Argos business center.

Each of those projects will result in significant capital improvements in the buildings/properties, significant new tax revenue, and new jobs. In addition to those projects, Jerry gave brief updates on development happening in Bourbon, Bremen, Plymouth and Culver, and touched on the impact projects like Stellar Communities and Regional Cities have had on this area.

Marshall County has built a collaborative environment amongst its communities and has been committed to investing in the tools to help drive economic growth. Those efforts are paying off, and we’re glad we got a chance to feature them on the show.

Your feedback is valuable, feel free to reach out anytime (jrea@sbrchamber.com)  with comments, compliments, criticisms, story ideas. I’ll do my best to get back you as soon as possible. Also, follow-us on facebook, Twitter (Jeff_Rea), or at WWW.WNIT.org/economicoutlook for all the latest info on the show. 

Enjoy the show!