Last week, Near Northside partners including Waco CDC, Mission Waco/Mission World, Waco Family Health Center, Antioch Community Church and the Greater Waco Chamber hosted a walking tour of the Near Northside Neighborhood.  Focused on the Colcord commercial corridor between 18th and Ninth streets, an area that has been a great destination for unique dining and shopping for several years is growing into one of Greater Downtown Waco’s iconic business districts.

New strategies for business and economic development in the area have been developed as the result of a neighborhood oriented planning process completed last year and due to the hard work of the neighborhood partners results are now beginning to reveal themselves along Colcord with a new identity, public infrastructure improvements and increasing business activity for local destinations along the corridor.

If you haven’t been to the Near Northiside recently make an effort to stop by the World Cup Cafe for Soul Food Tuesdays, pick up something for your tank at North Waco Tropical Fish, enjoy a falafel sandwich at D’s or a cheesesteak at Beatnix and check out the transformation of the Near Northside.

L-3 Platform Integration in Waco, Texas celebrated the 10^th anniversary May 5, 2012 of its Waco aircraft platform integration campus. This date also was the 70^th anniversary of the opening of their home, the Texas State Technical College Waco Industrial Airport. Since acquiring the site, L-3 has added 246,000 square feet bringing the total Waco campus to more than 1.4 million square feet and has grown employment from 1,450 to 2,100 in significantly skilled positions with the proud support of the Waco McLennan County Economic Development Corporation and Greater Waco Chamber.

Texas State Technical College Waco welcomed community stakeholders and TSTC staff on May 3, 2012 to the grand opening of the Col. James T. Connally Aerospace Center located on the 2-million-square-foot apron of TSTC’s Industrial Airport.  The center brings together under one roof TSTC Waco’s cluster of aerospace programs. The aerospace cluster at TSTC Waco delivers five high-demand aerospace programs, including aviation maintenance, avionics, aircraft pilot, aircraft dispatch and its newest air traffic controller – one of only 35 schools in the nation. In opening remarks, Mike Reeser said, “There is no school in Texas with a bigger, more diverse aerospace program.” Future additions to the cluster could include helicopter pilot and maintenance, composites, aircraft interiors and launch controllers.  The aerospace center is the newest asset in Waco’s aviation industry, producing the workforce for the 30 aviation companies that call Waco home and the new ones to come.

Business is booming and employers are hiring in Texas Central Park!  If you haven’t done so, we encourage you to take a drive down Texas Central Parkway, linking Bagby Avenue to Highway 84, to see just a few of the “Now Hiring” signs from companies such as Caterpillar Work Tools and AHP.  This drive will give you just a few examples of how our Greater Waco employers have brought unemployment down for the third straight month (to 6.7% in March), keeping us well below both State and National averages!

Texas Central Park is a 3,700 acre business park located just off Interstate 35 in southwest Waco.  The Park is home to over 85 businesses, with almost 13 million square feet of construction and employing almost 12,000 Greater Wacoans.  Most recently, Brazos Electric announced the construction of a state-of-the-art, 85,000 square foot headquarters location, which will front onto Bagby Avenue and the new Alliance Parkway extension, which is under construction today. 

What does job creation really mean to a community like Greater Waco?  To answer this, our team worked with Impact DataSource, an Austin-based economic consulting and analysis firm, to determine what 100 new jobs means to our economy.   Impact DataSource estimates that for everyone 100 new jobs created through growth and economic development activities, our community benefits from:

• Additional Indirect Jobs: 168 (for a total of 268 jobs)
• Direct Payroll: $5,744,253
• Indirect Payroll: $7,171,699 (for a total of $12,915,952 per year)
• Direct Output Value of Goods and Services: $30,621,034
• Indirect Output Value of Goods and Services: $30,862,940 (for a total of $61,483,974 per year)
• $654,000 in new housing construction
• $2,185,550 in new banking deposits
• $5,834,025 in additional retail sales annually in Greater Waco   

Impact DataSource used a number of sources for this analysis, including the Federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve Board, and the McLennan County Appraisal District.