SEMO Redi CEO Shad Burner presented the Cape Girardeau County Commission with an update of the organization’s work over the last several months during the Oct. 5 meeting. Burner also fielded questions from a group of citizens wanting more insight into the work and expenditures of SEMO Redi.
Burner, who took over the role of CEO about two years ago, said the organization has shifted from MAGNET and the way it was originally funded and hired Director of Business Growth and Innovation Lucas Presson as a full-time employee.
“We have really been changing the way the organization runs and works over time,” Burner said.
The first effort for SEMO Redi was to understand what’s happening with existing business and make sure the organization is there to help.
Presson completed 161 visits to existing businesses resulting in eight expansions and three have been completed at this time.
As of now, that is around $3 million in private capital investment in the region and 11 new jobs, Burner added.
“That is really what I see as the core of our work is continuing to understand and engage with those existing employers,” he said.
Another piece of SEMO Redi’s mission is to recruit employers to the region and a readily available list of properties in the region that Missouri Partnership are using for site selectors. There are 286 sites and buildings that are listed.
“Workforce continues to be the biggest challenge when we meet with employers,” Burner said. “We recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Perry County on economic development. This is a way to make us a bigger fish in this pond.”
Commissioner Stephen Daume asked Burner how many jobs SEMO Redi was credited for bringing to the area in the past year.
Burner said he could tag 11 specific jobs and another 50 from Trussworks to work SEMO Redi are doing.
“I understand that’s not many,” he said. “We have in our pipeline an expansion project that would be 50 jobs that we can hopefully announce soon and a handful of others coming from existing employers.”
Another question that has been asked of the commission is why the county is funding SEMO Redi around $67,000 a year for economic development as opposed to using the area chamber of commerces.
Using an economic development group to do recruiting and help with the technical side, Burner said, is common throughout the county.
“In my opinion it’s a very different function,” he said. “The chamber exists to connect the business community to one another for sales opportunities and promote the community internally. Our role is to go out and identify potential employers to come into the region and understand what’s happening in our existing business environment to make it better not only for them, but others coming here.”
Jan Farrar, who has been questioning the commission about data centers, asked Burner if he had spoken to any data centers and any plans for one to come to Cape Girardeau County.
He expressed the interest of data centers has increased and he has fielded calls asking about opportunities in the region, filling out request for information paperwork and connecting with sites and developers who need to be contacted.
“To be clear, we don’t have any today that we are in talks with,” Burner said. “We have connected some potential data center developments with land owners in our community, but that’s as much as we have done.”
Burner was also questioned if SEMO Redi was doing research for the Trans-America Corridor/Interstate 66 proposal, to which he replied, “no.”
“Our interest is expanding East West access,” he said. “We are not doing any research for, we asked our legislators to give us some money for its study to explore what four lanes would look like East West between here and Van Buren,” he said. “That didn’t make it in the budget and that’s the extent of anything we have done on East West access.”
The commission and Burner both agreed East West access is a need for any industry coming to the area as well as existing for easier and faster travel.
