Ozark and Nixa city officials are exploring a strategic partnership designed to seize economic development opportunities and improve their collective futures.
Yesterday, an advisory board comprising administrators from both cities and representatives from their business communities, received a presentation by Austin, Texas-based consultancy group TIP Strategies Inc., which was hired this summer to guide a possible partnership by determining the overall environment for development.
Dori Grinder, executive director of the Ozark Chamber of Commerce, said an informal group of Ozark and Nixa city officials has been working together for the last two years to determine if they should formally create a strategic partnership designed to manifest opportunities for economic development.
“We know that together we are very strong. We have great demographics in terms of income and great schools, and we kept thinking, ‘There’s something to this,’” Grinder said.
At yesterday’s meeting, which was held at the Ozark Community Center, TIP Strategies President and CEO Tom Stellman presented the group's preliminary findings.
To date, the firm has held a series of focus group interviews with officials from Ozark and Nixa, as well as the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, Bass Pro Shops, Branson and Taney County officials, Ozark and Nixa school district administrators and representatives from Mercy and CoxHealth. It also has conducted a survey of 3,100 residents through utility bills, and it shared those findings with the group.
“One of the key reasons we did the survey was to understand occupations and skills sets, things that people living in this area bring to bear as it relates to bringing in new employment, because one of the things that is driving is having access to a skilled workforce,” Stellman said, adding that a strength of both communities is proximity to several health care providers and educators. “That is the No. 1 issue for most employers.”
As bedroom communities of Springfield, Steelman said many residents work away from home and the gap between inbound and outbound commuters is widening. While in 2006 there were roughly 17,000 residents living in either Ozark or Nixa, by 2010, there were nearly 25,000, while inbound commuters remained stagnant at roughly 8,000, according to TIP Strategies research. Stellman said the top employers for residents of Ozark and Nixa that travel into the city are health care systems, at more than 4,500 residents, with the retail industry landing at No. 2, drawing around 1,800 workers. Of those surveyed who divulged where they worked, Mercy was at the top, employing 118 residents.
Top employers in the communities themselves were the respective school districts, Stellman said, followed by Wal-Mart and Diversified Plastics in Nixa and Wal-Mart and Lambert’s Cafe in Ozark.
A key to future growth, Steelman said, is to entice residents to spend more money near where they live, which can be most easily accomplished by creating jobs in their communities, so there is a larger “daytime population” in both Ozark and Nixa.
Another key to future growth, according to Stellman, would be an expansion of the physical link between the communities via State Highway 14. This would improve access to the Ozarks Technical Community College Richwood Valley campus, located between the towns, and make development more attractive in the area.
After the meeting, Curtis Jared, president and chief operating officer of development and property management firm Jared Enterprises and member of the advisory board, said he thinks there should be a partnership, but widening Highway 14 should not be a priority.
“If you look at where Nixa is growing, it is growing back toward Springfield. Ozark is growing back toward Springfield. That’s where the synergy is at right now,” Jared said. “Where they’d like it to grow and where it is going to grow are two different things. They are talking about 14, and in the future that is important … but the east-west corridor that is going to come in a lot sooner is CC. It is closer to Springfield and you’ve got more rooftops there. Commercial [developers] are looking for rooftops. At 14, you don’t have the neighborhood density out there. You have farmland.”
For more on this story, read the Dec. 7 Early Friday Digital Edition or the Dec. 10 print edition of the Springfield Business Journal.[[In-content Ad]]
Springfield event venue Belamour LLC gained new ownership; The Wok on West Bypass opened; and Hawk Barber & Shop closed on a business purchase that expanded its footprint to Ozark.
