City of Paducah launching new program to focus on growth of city, county

Paducah welcome sign

PADUCAH, Ky. (KBSI) – The City of Paducah is launching a new program to share information about projects, people, and initiatives that are focused on growing Paducah and McCracken County.

The program is called Crossroads for Growth and is hosted by Paducah Mayor George Bray.

“Crossroads for Growth is a program to discuss the efforts we are making to grow the community,” said Mayor Bray. “I can speak for myself, we really have a team effort, everyone pounding the pavement, looking for projects that add jobs to this community. One thing for sure is that we all are staying focused on the goal, and that goal is to drive growth for this community.”

On the inaugural episode, Mayor Bray interviews Greater Paducah Economic Development President/CEO Bruce Wilcox who has served in that role for nearly five years.

Wilcox said that during that time GPED has announced 850 new jobs for the community which have created 550 indirect or induced jobs.

Wilcox shared GPED’s “elevator speech” to get prospective businesses interested in Paducah and McCracken County. Wilcox said, “Our elevator speech is good enough to get a business on the hook, but then we try to differentiate ourselves on what makes Paducah special or what makes us different. We like to talk about the four ‘R’s:’ rail, river, road, and runway.”

Regarding rail, Wilcox said that Paducah is one of only three communities in the Midwest that has rail service to the north, south, east and west from a single location, the Triple Rail Site. That turns to river access. Paducah is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers. About 80 percent of all inland marine traffic passes by the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers which is only about 40 miles away.

Other topics discussed during this episode include:

  • Structure and funding of GPED
  • Importance of building relationships with site selector services
  • Incentive programs available to prospective businesses
  • Paducah and McCracken County’s advantages in attracting businesses (location, logistics, access to power, access to labor, and site readiness)
  • Recent investments in site readiness

Crossroads for Growth will air on Government 11 (for Comcast subscribers). The episode also is online at paducahky.gov and the various social media outlets for the City of Paducah including Youtube and Facebook. Visit the City’s Youtube channel (@paducahkygov) and become a subscriber to be notified of new videos.

Crossroads for Growth is produced through the television production facilities at West Kentucky Community and Technical College.

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