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GUN BARREL CITY, Texas — Country living, with lake access and lots of growth. It's what makes Gun Barrel City unique, along with its support for one particular presidential candidate - Willie Nelson. It's an eclectic city that brings something for everyone, and it seems like everyone is catching on. Dian...Continue Reading

GUN BARREL CITY–Keep Texas Beautiful (KTB), a statewide grassroots environmental and community improvement non-profit organization, recently named Gun Barrel City Beautification Committee a Gold Star Affiliate, a designation granted to 86 affiliates of KTB’s nearly 300 affiliates. Gold Star recognition is the membership recognition highest status any community affiliate ca...Continue Reading

GUN BARREL CITY–Gun Barrel City Council approved the use of $80,000 out of the Hotel and Motel Fund for an Electric Fall Festival in November. The festival was the idea of Council Member Gary Lerew and Mistletoe Mania Owner and Event Planner Renee Weaver. Both Lerew and Weaver say th...Continue Reading

CEDAR CREEK LAKE–During the April Luncheon of the Cedar Creek Lake Area Chamber of Commerce (CCLACC), members heard about the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program from program President Charlene Heydinger.  PACE is a proven financial tool that incentivizes Texas’ property owners to upgrade facility infrastructure with little or no capita...Continue Reading

In Texas, Dan and Emily find a waterfront home on Cedar Creek Lake that has tons of potential but needs a lot of work. They hope their budget will be enough to give them the open floor plan and modern farmhouse look they desire, turning the dated home into thei...Continue Reading

Website Engages Community Members and Business Owners GUN BARREL CITY, TX -- Gun Barrel City Economic Development Corporation recently launched a newly designed website, created by Golden Shovel Agency, to further strengthen its online presence and to foster economic growth. The website is beautifully designed with unique elements such as a...Continue Reading

Pier 334, the Rebuild of Big Chief Landing: 60 room Boutique Hotel (55 standard rooms and 5 luxury suits) A 20,000 square foot, three-story food and entertainment Pavilion Splash Park Amphitheater and stage A Marina built on floating docks with 40 boat slips 225 parking spots as well as Valet parking A public access fishing dock an...Continue Reading

Profile of the Consultants Survey Respondents At least 80 percent of those responding to our 17th annual Consultants Survey work with manufacturers of durable goods, with some of these consultants also working with other manufacturers, and three quarters are working on distribution/logistics projects. Nearly half represent clients in data processing/computer-related sector...Continue Reading

The challenges faced in 2020 were unlike any other confronted in our lifetime. The global pandemic wreaked havoc on our personal and professional lives and the U.S. and global economies. The Commerce Department reports that U.S. GDP declined 3.5 percent in 2020, with the economy falling into recession in February 202...Continue Reading

When we last took stock of Area Development’s Top States for Doing Business, it was a bit hard to gauge what “doing business” was even supposed to look like. In 2020, the country was riding one wave of COVID-19 after another, mixing times of turmoil and concern with ripples o...Continue Reading

Covid-19 has resulted in wild gyrations in the supply chain with the hard-hit semiconductor industry having a major impact on U.S. auto manufacturing. From its beginning, Covid-19 resulted in auto plants closing around the country while sales of computers and other consumer products skyrocketed. When automakers resumed production, they foun...Continue Reading

It’s no secret that the recipe for economic success usually includes generous portions of innovation and technology. That has been part of the economic development story for many years in such places as Boston, Seattle, the Research Triangle, and Silicon Valley. But just as you can find more and more cutting-edg...Continue Reading

You’re evaluating a new site. It checks all the boxes when it comes to the property, local infrastructure, and business climate. You have one more box to check — labor supply. You’re presented with a hodge-podge of numbers. How can you make sense of it all? And what’s the botto...Continue Reading

It seems like the ultimate good-news story. The shift toward electric vehicles will greatly improve the long-term climate health of the planet. It’ll improve human health, too, by reducing pollution. It’ll create thousands of jobs in new industries, with new manufacturing operations lifting local economies. What’s not to like? Don’t forge...Continue Reading

For nearly two years, the predominant COVID-19 driven incentive compliance issue looming over companies has been the difficulty to achieve and report on headcount performance as part of economic development incentive agreements. The evolving workplace landscape precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic adds another wrinkle to this process. With the trend towar...Continue Reading

The digitizing of the economy is pervasive, whether you’re performing quality control in an automated manufacturing plant; undergoing a medical procedure; operating a container crane at a backed-up West Coast port; launching fabrication of a 3D-printed prototype; or putting the finishing touches on a breakthrough architectural design. Could using our ow...Continue Reading

Chances are high that if you’ve been traveling around various regions of the United States in the past few years, you have noticed a solar array where one was not previously. I have had a similar “ah-ha” moment. You may have been struck by the fact that there are vast sola...Continue Reading

Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Laura Kelly of Kansas are covered extensively in this issue as the winners of the 2021 Governors’ Cups — the former for total qualified capital investment projects last year and the latter for total per capita projects. The governors of the other ranking state...Continue Reading

The ink on Intel’s $20 billion investment deal in Ohio was barely dry in January when experts started weighing in on the long-term impact of the deal. Much of the analysis in the press centered on Ohio’s $2 billion incentives package for the $200 billion California-based company, but the ramifications o...Continue Reading

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas started off strong in the first month of 2022 with gains of 29,000 total non-agricultural jobs in the first month of 2022, exceeding the previous record employment level set in December 2021 by reaching more than 13 million jobs, the Texas Workforce Commission reported Friday. Texas ha...Continue Reading

Whether you teach kids, tend bar, make sales calls, develop apps, or do whatever else for a living, you may have spent some period of the last two years considering doing something new. The COVID-19 pandemic rewired the way many of us think about the relationship between our careers an...Continue Reading

Gun Barrel City is planning a classy new waterfront development in the Big Chief area on Cedar Creek Lake (Reservoir). Pier 334 promises to impress visitors as they travel over the Cedar Creek Parkway (Highway 334) bridge into town. The building's three levels of floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the lake ar...Continue Reading

Over the past two years, building occupants have become more aware of the health of the environment around them, especially indoors. Additionally, awareness of “Sick Building Syndrome” — the idea that building occupants become sick from the building they work in — has grown. Now, occupants expect the opposite: ...Continue Reading

A prerequisite for a high-quality workforce is people. To upskill employees, attract remote workers, or fill a skill gap through a community college program, you first need people. That may be rather obvious, but talent attraction and retention efforts have been built on the assumption that when it comes t...Continue Reading