NATCHEZ &045; A two-year anniversary nears for the reorganized economic development board, and its chairman remains positive about Natchez, Adams County and the community he always has called home.

W.W. &uot;Woody&uot; Allen Jr., active for many years in the area’s oil industry, became chairman of the Natchez Adams Economic and Community Development Authority in May 2001, heading a five-person board and charged with specific goals to put the city and county on the fast track to maintaining and developing a strong industrial base.

The challenges? Find an executive director to get Natchez back into the economic development arena. Renew contacts within the state economic development agency. Make Natchez competitive with the hundreds, maybe thousands of communities its size that will court some of the same businesses and industries. Foster the existing industries by providing every support available.

Those challenges grew during the past two years, as Natchez and the nation in general saw the economy spiral downward after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and as three key Natchez industries, Johns Manville, Ethyl and International Paper announced their Natchez plants would close.

&uot;The new board began with a couple of leads but nothing going on in the EDA on a daily contact basis,&uot; Allen said. &uot;We needed an executive director who already was actively working in economic development, someone who could come in with a contact base already in place.&uot;

The hiring of Michael Ferdinand on Sept. 10 fulfilled that goal, Allen said. Ferdinand had worked with the Mississippi Development Authority as a senior international business consultant since 1993 when he officially began as executive director in Natchez in late September.

&uot;Michael immediately put us in touch with all the state people,&uot; Allen said. &uot;He was asked to make contact after contact to be sure we got back in the running.&uot;

He did that, Allen said. &uot;Projects began to increase. We now have 22 on the list, and a dozen of those are what we call active.&uot;

Further, Ferdinand helped to get Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove to Natchez to speak to doctors during the medical malpractice crisis, Allen said. &uot;Bob Rhorlack (director of the Mississippi Development Authority) has come down and met with us on a regular basis. And we’ve had numerous referrals by the governor. With that window open, we’ve tried to take every advantage of that.&uot;

The Natchez board’s tactics were to &uot;just turn Michael loose the first year, just let him make all the contacts,&uot; Allen said. &uot;For us, just getting the opportunity to submit a proposal is important. We want the people on the state level to get used to seeing our proposals and to start thinking, ‘maybe we should send this one to Natchez.’&uot;

As the board hosted state development consultants in Natchez during that first year, it became evident that most of them had not been to Natchez in years, Allen said.

&uot;We had contact with one of the eight. The others were unfamiliar with what we were doing. That’s when we knew we had to build up again,&uot; he said.

Still, the challenges are huge, Allen said. &uot;We lack industrial property. We do not have a good industrial park. A lot of communities have gone to public-private partnerships to cover some of the initial costs for new business or industry. We don’t have that.&uot;

The leasing by Adams County Board of Supervisors of the Riverside Central property near the Natchez port was the right thing to do at the time, Allen said.

&uot;A building will bring people to town. It can be an asset,&uot; he said. &uot;And it keeps us from letting other people control what we’re trying to do.&uot;

With the owner of a prime property entering the negotiations with a potential client, the process can become more complicated and less successful.

&uot;I told the supervisors we did not have anyone ready to go into that building,&uot; he said. &uot;But everything at the time was very positive when that decision was made by the supervisors to take the one-year option on the property.&uot;

Riverside Central, owned by Larry L. &uot;Butch&uot; Brown, a former Natchez mayor and now executive director of the state Department of Transportation, is the kind of property a company might seek, especially because of its proximity to the port and the rail line, Allen said.

&uot;The Natchez port was being told at this time to gear up for one of the best years they had ever had. Reports were that IP was doing very well,&uot; he said.

&uot;We had a meeting with Steve Olsen (IP mill manager) on a Tuesday to tell him about the supervisors and the warehouse and to find out if there was anything he could do to help us,&uot; Allen said.

Olsen canceled that meeting. On Thursday of that week, the announcement was made by IP of the plant closing.

&uot;Then within a week, Alcoa told us the Vidalia plant was no longer a part of their core industries. All of a sudden, there was big change for the port.&uot;

Still, the county had the option on the building &045; a plus for EDA efforts, Allen said. The option on the property expires at the end of November. &uot;Every community we compete with is basically giving people the building and the land or leasing it to them with low interest.&uot;

Allen urges community involvement in locating companies whose owners might consider moving to Natchez. &uot;That is the best way to get prospects,&uot; he said. &uot;If we can get a project and take it to the state rather than the other way around, we are not competing with all the other communities in the state. And the company gets more advantages from incentives the state has to offer.&uot;

The board was pleased to find a potential buyer for the Ethyl plant after that company announced it would close its Natchez operation. &uot;We welcome Davison Trucking out of Ruston, Louisiana. They are in a joint venture with Tessenderlo to manufacture one of the same things Ethyl was manufacturing,&uot; Allen said.

Opposition has surfaced against

the new chemical company, with opponents speaking out about potential environmental hazards.

&uot;Ethyl produced four products. This is one of them. The product will be handled in exactly the same way,&uot; Allen said.

The product, sodium hydrosulfide, is used by paper mills and water treatment facilities, he said. The closing of International Paper’s Natchez mill later this year will not affect the Davison-Tessenderlo project, Allen said. &uot;They have much bigger marketing than just locally.&uot;

The community was facing not only the loss of the Ethyl jobs but also of &uot;a major plant that was going to sit and deteriorate and be a major eyesore,&uot; Allen said. &uot;To put someone back in there making the same product is a good deal. We welcome Davison. They will be very good people to be involved in our community.&uot;

Can the EDA succeed in replacing all the jobs lost by closure of three major industries? Maybe some but not all of the jobs will come back as new companies choose Natchez.

Allen concedes, however, that the jobs may come a few at a time. &uot;We haven’t seen the fruits of our labor yet, but I believe we will, maybe five, 10 or 30 at a time and probably different kinds of jobs.&uot;