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Paris Economic Development Corp. Mid-year Review As of April Is', Paris Economic Development Corporation (PEDC) will be half way into its fiscal year. The following mid-year review is a two part, brief look at what the PEDC Board and staff have been working on for the past six months, as outlined in its 2010-11 Plan of Work. The full text of the PEDC Plan of Work is available at http://www_paristexasusa.com/node/216. As always your comments, feedback and suggestions are welcome at parisedckparistexas.com or www.facebook.com/paristexasusa. Business Attraction & Marketing PEDC has gone wet in its approach to attract new business to the area. With the abundance of water available for industry in Paris and Lamar County, PEDC staff has begun to actively promote this valuable natural resource to companies thirsty for it. With ads in two nationally distributed publications promoting both water and transportation assets, PEDC is hoping to catch the attention of businesses that are either closely related to our existing industry or who can potentially become suppliers to those industries. To maximize the effectiveness of its marketing efforts, PEDC has begun thorough research of a wide range of water-intensive industries with a goal of identifying a short list of prime targets for attraction to the area. The research process consists of reviewing a list of water-intensive industries in two specific geographic regions, as provided by the database service InfoUSA. Geographic regions of interest are the upper Midwest and California, targeted because of their historically high costs of doing business as compared with Paris, Lamar County and the State of Texas. PEDC receives qualified leads on a regular basis from the Governor's Office of Economic Development. These leads are reviewed to determine how Paris matches up with the minimum criteria specified by the company engaged in the site search. If minimum criteria are met, then a proposal package is prepared by PEDC staff and submitted for consideration. Project leads also come from site location consultants and from PEDC's direct marketing efforts. This year to date, PEDC is working on approximately 15 projects in response to our marketing and project lead generating efforts. We work every day to keep the project pipeline full. In cooperation with the Governor's office, through the website www.texassitesearch.com, PEDC markets many of the Paris and Lamar County area's available commercial properties. Using this online too, site selectors and expanding companies can search from a large database of properties across the state by searching for key property features or narrowing the search by geographic area. Any building or site posted on the PEDC website will be promoted on the State's property tool as well, providing double exposure. PEDC staff is adding value to the local real estate owner and broker community as well. PEDC recently assembled a thorough listing of retail and commercial buildings and land. This information has been, and will continue to be made available to the developer and investor community showing an interest in Paris, Texas. The information is organized by location, price, lot size, agent/broker, company, contact, distance to loop and miscellaneous notes. All locations are mapped and identified by a unique reference number. PEDC's goal is to make Paris more friendly for this who wish to invest and operate businesses in our community. 47