Brown heads up New Madrid County’s economic development team

NEW MADRID, Mo. - As county engineer, Donnie Brown works to smooth the way for county residents on the approximately 600 miles of county maintained roads. Also, Brown has taken on the additional job of smoothing the way for businesses and industry to come into the county.

As mayor of New Madrid, Brown helped form the New Madrid County Mayors Association. The group brings together the county’s mayors to work on mutual problems and programs. When Brown stepped down from his duties as mayor, the New Madrid County Commissioners asked him to continue to work with the Association as its executive director.

Following the retirement of the economic development director for the Mayors Association, Brown has added those duties to his already full schedule. But, he quickly points out, this work is with help of Angie Kellams, former New Madrid County Assessor Ronnie Simmons, New Madrid City Administrator Richard McGill and New Madrid County Port Director Timmie Lynn Hunter.

“We consider ourselves the New Madrid County Economic Development Team. We all just volunteer and pitch in,” Brown said.

According to Brown there are four separate economic development projects under way in the county.

The Mayors Association is funding the costs for the Missouri Extension Office to work with the communities of Risco and Morehouse. Over three years the Missouri Extension will assist the communities to identify a need then to pursue it.

Risco would like to attract a store which could provide necessities such as groceries and other household items, Brown said. Morehouse is looking at the possibility of a having a truck stop locate on the future Interstate-57.

The economic team is working with the Missouri Partnership, a branch of the Department of Economic Development.

“They try to bring industry in from outside of Missouri,” Brown explained. “Last year it was almost completely dead with the corona virus but since January things are starting to pick back up. We have already submitted about 10 different proposals this year for projects.”

Through the Missouri Partnership’s Raise the Bar Assess program, Brown said they are working with a site consultant. Recently the team submitted a mock proposal, which the consultant then critiqued.

In July, the economic team hosted a mock site visits as well.They traveled across the county with members from Missouri Partnership visiting various locations and met with utility partners who would be involved if an industry located within the county.

“The consultant would say you are doing this well, you need to do this better. This helps us make our process better when we go out for one of these actual proposals or for an actual site visit,” Brown said. ‘It is just an overall program to help us make our economic develop efforts a little better.”

The second program is called Raise the Bar - Compete. It is an effort by the Missouri Partnership with assistance from Global Location Strategies to identify mega-sites of 750 acres plus in the state. According to Brown the St. Jude Industrial Park made the cut from 30 statewide sites to 12. Following a recent site visit, he said he hopes New Madrid County will be one of three sites marketed across the United States to various industries.

While economic development is new to him, Brown said he has enjoyed working with the team, the state and the prospective industries.

“You don’t realize what all goes into it and how short a time frame these businesses give you to turn something around and get it back to them,” he said. “It has been very interesting and it has certainly kept us on our toes.”