LEDC Update

A question that I get asked a lot when I tell people that I work in economic development is, “What do you do?”

It’s an understandable question, to be sure, and one that really comes down to a simple one word answer with a complex multi-layered explanation to follow. The one-word answer is “jobs.”

The primary goal of any economic development corporation in any community is to create jobs and we pursue that goal by employing strategies in three key categories: business attraction, business retention and expansion, and tourism-based development.

I’ll be conducting deep dives into each one of these categories in future installments of these updates, but for now, I want to discuss the first category purely through the lens of how it serves to achieve that overarching goal of job creation.

So, let’s look at business attraction. On the surface, it’s the simplest connection to make.

Attract a new business, and with the new business comes a certain number of new job opportunities for our area. However, just like defining economic development itself, there’s a lot more to it than what is on the surface.

When we research, communicate, and work with any business prospect for the city of Linden, we analyze what type of business that they are and breakdown the types of jobs that they will be creating and how those jobs fit in with the labor market that we have here.

A great local example of job creation through business attraction was when we sold property to Total Highway Maintenance [THM] last year for their Linden-located operations facility.

THM holds contracts and works in tandem with the Texas Department of Transportation and selling them the land where their facility is located served to lock in roughly 60 good paying jobs for laborers in our communities.

In addition to the jobs themselves, THM’s presence in our community also benefits our local businesses as well with their workers dining in our restaurants, shopping in our stores, and filling up their vehicles (both personal and construction) at our gas stations.

To bring the relevance of this topic to the present, the LEDC and the City of Linden are now in discussions with Open Hearts Children and Family Services.

Open Hearts is a group looking to purchase the old Good Shepherd hospital here and install a multipurpose residential treatment facility geared towards housing foster children.

This opportunity has us all very excited because a facility of this caliber will be the only one of its kind in northeast Texas to take in children who end up in the foster system for reasons beyond their control—these are children whose parents or guardians are unable to care for them for any number of reasons.

These children will be able to enroll in our schools and participate in our community through 4H, Linden Pride, and any other of our fantastic community organizations.

This facility will also allow those children to continue to live stable lives despite their unfortunate circumstances.

Beyond the great things that having a facility like this will do for our community, the economic impact of the organization will be tremendous as well. A facility of this size will bring with it approximately 20 jobs to Linden.

These jobs will range from certified specialists to custodians.

This means that any laborer with good work ethic participating in our labor market will have the opportunity to benefit from this potential new addition to our community.

Part of Open Heart’s site selection process will involve a town hall meeting to be held here in Linden to communicate their intentions with our community and hear feedback from our community members as well.

Keep a sharp eye out for the public posting of this meeting in the Cass County Sun in the weeks to come. I hope I see you there!