Heartland Food Solutions: You might have noticed a short news story between the holidays about Heartland Food Solutions in Deer Creek. The story pulls heavily from a DCEO press release about this company (also the owner of Top Fox Snacks) getting a $1M grant to help it expand its offerings and creating/retaining 40 jobs. What went unmentioned is the amount of work GPEDC’s own Sally Hanley put into this project. She has developed a relationship with the company for years and has consistently connected with them about their needs and opportunities. She was the one that put together the grant that was awarded to the Village of Deer Creek that will allow the company to grow. This is the best kind of economic development: As exciting as business attraction is, there is nothing quite like helping our existing businesses take advantage of opportunities to grow.
Corn Belts Update: Over the past few years our region has made great strides in organizing efforts that leverage one of our greatest assets: the Illinois River. At the center of this work has been the Heart of Illinois Regional Port District and the folks at Corn Belt Ports (a group organizing efforts along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers). Prior to 2019 there were no U.S inland ports in the heart of the Corn Belt. Between 2020 and 2022, four new regional top-ranked Corn Belt Ports were created and federally recognized. They handle nearly 100 million tons of freight and have attracted over $2 billion in multi-modal and natural infrastructure since 2022. On February 12 at noon you can get an overview of new investments and impacts, and conversations around economic development for the Upper Mississippi Region. You can register for this webinar sponsored by the University of Illinois Extension here.
Emergency Planning: Tri-County Business Partnership for Resilience and Emergency Planning (B-PREP) invites private sector partners to participate in their upcoming Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) Workshop on April 6 at 1:30 pm. This interactive session will provide practical tools and templates to help your organization prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptions. Disasters and emergencies have a profound impact on the private sector: According to FEMA, 40% of businesses never reopen after a disaster, and another 25% fail within one year. The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that 90% of companies fail within two years if they cannot resume operations within five days. By investing a small amount of time now, you can minimize the impact of future disruptions and safeguard your employees, customers, and community. Please RSVP to confirm your attendance here.
Big Table Logan County: We have scheduled our last Rural Big Table. On February 19, we will host our Logan County event from 3 – 6 pm at the Lincoln Park District offices. More details to come, but you can learn more here.
Win Together: The Heart of Illinois section of the American Society for Quality is hosting a guest speaker at Distillery Labs on Tuesday, January 20, starting at 6:00 pm and is inviting local government officials to join. Sheila Montney of Win Together will be making a presentation entitled “Transforming Local Government: Building Systems That Drive Results.” Sheila founded Win Together in 2020 with the goal of helping communities build sustainable cultures of excellence powered by people and process. Sheila brings a wealth of experience from her 35-year career in the private sector where she led transformational work as an executive in operations, technology, and enabling functions for State Farm’s financial services product lines. More information and registration for this free event can be found here.
Have a great weekend.
Chris