Economic development group close to naming CEO

The Jefferson City Regional Economic Partnership (JCREP) is close to naming a chief executive officer, the Cole County Commission was told Tuesday.

“We are in the process of finalizing our CEO search, which has been going on for the past two months,” said Larry Kolb, chairman of the regional economic development board.

“We had a lot of good applicants with five finalists.”

JCREP was formed when Jefferson City Chamber of Commerce chose to assign economic development into a different group so chamber staff could focus on supporting businesses.

Kolb said the board is continuing to focus on workforce development, broadband connectivity expansion, business attraction, housing availability and affordable transportation. The board is comprised of local business leaders as well as city and county officials.

Missy Bonnot, vice president for economic development for JCREP, said it had been working on a “very large project” for the last four months.

“It was probably the largest project I have ever worked on with a $1 million investment and 1,500 jobs,” Bonnot said. “This was in the food industry. We recently found out we were one of 11 sites the company was looking at in four states, and we found out last week that we were eliminated from the competition.”

She said the main reason Jefferson City lost was the company had concerns about potential flooding from the Missouri River at the proposed business site.

“We were proposing a site close to the proposed site for the Heartland Port with about 125 acres,” Bonnot said. The port site is near the Ike Skelton National Guard Center.

“Our site selection is tough,” Kolb said. “Two other sites they were looking at in Missouri had pretty much flat ground.”

“They’re an agriculture type-based business, and it would have fit the type of employees we could offer,” Bonnot said. “They also required more rail connections, and the site we had didn’t offer that.

“We learned a lot in the process, but I don’t like losing,” she added.