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Manufacturers Take Advantage Of Ardmore's Labor Supply

Oklahoma's growth has been so good that even the smaller communities are doing well. "And that is a labor-driven situation," Bussert explains. Many of Oklahoma's smaller towns have a large number of unemployed and underemployed workers, making them very appealing to expanding companies. Case in point: The city of Ardmore, with a population of approximately 30,000 people, has won a number of major investments in the past year, and key to this, says Wes Stuckey, president and CEO of the Ardmore Development Authority, is the area's underemployment.

"We have some significant numbers here to demonstrate to companies for underemployment," he explains. "We do studies about every 18 months, and our unemployment rate now is something like 4 percent. We've also identified 4,000 underemployed, so I don't have a concern about a company's ability to find enough employees here right now."

Ardmore's labor appeal has attracted several manufacturing facilities in the past year. East Jordan Iron Works, in fact, is investing $35 million for a new foundry, where it will produce cast iron manhole covers and drainage gates. The new facility will employ approximately 250 workers.

On the other end of the manufacturing spectrum, Intec is building a new $1 million manufacturing facility in Ardmore as well, creating 20 jobs. The state-of-the-art facility will produce dental implants and other dental-industry products.

Besides Ardmore's labor availability, companies are also finding the southern Oklahoma city a good spot from a distribution standpoint. Ardmore is located on Interstate 35 about halfway between Oklahoma City and the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.

Best Buy has definitely found a distribution haven in Ardmore. The electronics retailer is building a second warehouse in the area. Currently, Best Buy has a 450,000-sq.-ft. (41,806-sq.-m.) warehouse in Ardmore, and the second facility will be a 120,000-sq.-ft. (11,148-sq.-m.) project.

Southwest Silicon Technologies also found Ardmore's market access hard to resist. Southwest Silicon's new state-of-the-art facility will be used to polish and reclaim silicon wafers for wafer fabrication. "We chose Ardmore because the city has been very receptive to this type of industry starting up here," says Kelly Burke, president of Southwest Silicon Technologies. "We were also attracted to Ardmore because of its accessibility to the Southwest and its proximity to the I-35 corridor."