Lawton working to attract new industries, businesses

Lawton is poised to take advantage of economic development opportunities, city leaders said last week.

Cooperative ventures and programs being set into place to fund infrastructure upgrades are among the reasons Lawton-Fort Sill is seeing increasing interest from industries seeking new homes, said officials with the Lawton Economic Development Corporation (LEDC) at their annual review.

LEDC President Brad Cooksey said Lawton, like Oklahoma is as a whole, must be ready to benefit from the fact that Texas — including the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex — is running out of space for new industrial customers, and those industries will be looking north for new locations.

“It’s important that we be ready,” Cooksey said. “The biggest cities are getting too full.”

Lawton already is drawing attention, Cooksey said, noting LEDC had a record year in terms of the number of site visits from prospective business and industry. Cooksey said LEDC responded to 30 projects last year; 19 were manufacturing with the potential to provide 13,525 jobs and bring a $5 billion investment to the local economy. Industrial leaders said that was just the site visits LEDC participated in, because officials know other prospective businesses made site visits on their own.

Barry Ezerski, chairman of the LEDC Board of Trustees, lauded the emphasis the City of Lawton has placed on bettering the infrastructure needed to support business and industry, pointing to funds already spent to upgrade West Lee Boulevard west of Southwest 67th Street (largely reimbursed by commerce funding), plans to upgrade Goodyear Boulevard in the west industrial park, and the proposal to build an industrial bypass to extend Goodyear Boulevard north to U.S. 62 (to be funded in large part by state transportation funds).

Ezerski said it is an example of partnerships Lawton officials are developing, which, in turn, is allowing local economic development efforts to be successful.

Barry Matherly, president/CEO of Hickey Global, said the site selection process is an important component of economic development, and among the key points of the evaluation process are roads and sidewalks. That is where Lawton has a key advantage, through the number of road projects being planned or already under way, said Matherly, whose economic development-related companies have more than 20 offices world-wide.

“That’s important,” he said of Lawton’s infrastructure upgrades, adding the business of attracting industry has changed in recent years and companies now are willing to pay more for good sites.

City leaders have said Lawton will continue to place an emphasis on such development; for example, lauding voters who passed the Capital Improvements Program (CIP) Extension in August. Not only does that CIP increase funding for economic development, it has a permanent one-quarter-percent sales tax dedicated to road and bridge work.

Cooksey and Ezerski said Lawton leaders are moving to address other factors that will strengthen economic development efforts, such as workforce training. Ezerski pointed to FISTA Innovation Park’s plans to build a STEM lab that will link youth interested in science, technology and engineering to adults who practice those skills. Matherly said such focus is important, explaining 42 percent of workforce leaders asked to identify key needs said workforce is their top issue.