Stories

Mental Health and Your Representatives

For most economic development positions around the State of Kansas, the average employment time is one to three years.  An economic development person who serves five years is considered long-term. October is depression and mental health awareness month. I have always said that economic development is the most political position that I’d ever want to go into. Be kind always, you never know what battle someone else is fighting.

Stories

An Industrial Park Tale

Patience is a virtue, but patience is hard.  When I first started at Republic County Economic Development (RCED) in 2004, patience was the hardest part of the job.  An example that I always use is that when someone works in a restaurant, they wash a table and the table is washed.  The worker can check that off of the list.  In Economic Development, something that is started one year might take ten years to be “complete”. 

One example is the NCK Industrial Park where the non-profit group bought land approximately twenty-five years ago to make sure that there was affordable land for development. The land was marketed with a sign and by different economic development boards/directors over the years, but it took until 2014 to actually land the first business on the Industrial Park land. It took fifteen years to develop the area and the plan is still going on in 2023. 

RCED was an integral partner in securing Love’s Travel Stop for the Industrial Park.  Then Director of JenRus Freelance, Luke Mahin, worked hard on this project. He spent countless hours in meetings with Love’s development team.