Steve Pritchett, Amarillo EDC
The Amarillo Economic Development Corp. (EDC) is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year and it’s amazing to compare the state of our local economy in 1989 to today. Back then, Amarillo’s unemployment rate was higher than the national average and consumer activity was in a state of decline. What job opportunities did exist in
Amarillo in the late 1980s were in a limited number of industry sectors. We were in a state of economic inertia. I joined the Amarillo EDC twenty years ago and thus have been able to witness and participate in the transformation that has followed.
Legislation allowing the establishment of a local economic development sales tax, enacted in Texas in 1989, was overwhelmingly adopted by Amarillo voters that fall. Early on, that economic development sales tax revenue stream brought us about $6 million per year. Next year we expect those revenues will approach $18 million.
That statistic alone is testament to the extent Amarillo’s economy has grown in 25 years. As Texans, we’ve been fortunate to have the nation’s strongest economy for several years and Amarillo has definitely contributed, having engaged in projects with companies like Tyson, AIG, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Atmos Energy.
One of our projects is particularly illustrative: Bell Helicopter. In 1998, there were no people employed in the aviation manufacturing industry in Amarillo. That was the year we first attracted Bell Helicopter to establish their V-22 Osprey tiltrotor assembly factory here. Today the company employs more than 1,000 highly skilled workers manufacturing four different aircraft types.
Bell operates in over 1.5 million square feet of state-of-the-art facilities which were all designed and built by local contractors. Lavin & Associates served as the project’s architect and Western Builders was the general contractor. Since the initial attraction project, the Amarillo EDC has engaged in a total of seven expansion projects with Bell.
In the most recent project, just announced, we are providing a $3 million grant which the company will use to build an aircraft test-run stand, specifically designed to test futurevertical lift aircraft like the V-280 Valor tiltrotor which is currently in development.
With such diversification of our local economy there’s every reason to expect continued growth. Economist Ray Perryman has forecasted expansion in real gross product of 4.14 percent per year for the next five years, and predicts that nearly 13,000 new jobs will be created locally during that period. Perryman believes that expansion of business activity in Amarillo will far exceed national norms and the Amarillo EDC intends to continue to be the driving factor in that trend.
— By Steve Pritchett, vice president, Amarillo Economic Development Corp. This article first appeared in the February 2015 issue of Texas Real Estate Business magazine.