Meanwhile, in Pryor, not far from Bartlesville in the northeastern corner of the state, an effort got under way in July to build the area's industrial base with the opening of the Small Business Innovation and Incubation Entrepreneurial Center. A joint venture of Oklahoma State University-Okmulgee and the MidAmerica Industrial Park, the center houses four business incubators with offices and access to labs or shop areas. Industries the owners have in mind for the center include bioscience, nanotechnology, hardware and software development and engineering.
      "Centers like this are 'starter homes' for technology-based business," noted Leann Burger, manager of the new center. "Our clients will contribute to the economic vitality of the area and ultimately be leaders in developing 21st century innovations for rural Oklahoma." Prospective tenants need a technology-driven idea in the area of light manufacturing, a solid business plan and their own financial resources.

Inland Port Is a Valuable Site-Location Asset Oklahoma is hardly a coastal state, yet its waterways and inland port are central to some companies' success inasmuch as they realize a 15-percent savings in transportation costs. "If it weren't for waterway transportation, there are industrial locations in our area that wouldn't be here," says Bob Portiss, port Bob Portiss is director of the Tulsa Port of Catoosa, which has played a key role in landing corporate projects in northeastern Oklahoma in recent years. The port's 2,000-acre (810-hectare) intermodal industrial park is home to more than 50 companies; 2,500 people work at the park. director at the Tulsa Port of Catoosa (www.tulsaport.com). "It was a requirement for Whirlpool when they came into the area, because their steel moves by water."       Kimberly-Clark told Portiss it would never use the port except once, but that one instance is the key to the plant being there. The industrial dryers had to be transported in one piece via water, which sealed the deal for a Tulsa area location.       "When we're involved in site location, we don't want just anybody," says Portiss. "We want people that will employ barge transportation and therefore increase the tonnage of the port, buy from those who do, increasing the tonnage of the port, or provide a service that will make the port better for those looking at a location in which to operate a business." An example of the latter is a customs house brokerage freight forwarding company; UPS has that role, having acquired a local provider. "A fourth would be someone who would use our foreign trade zone."

      OSU-Okmulgee already operates an extension at MidAmerica, which is one of several amenities at Oklahoma and the nation's largest industrial park. The 9,000-acre (3,645-hectare) park has a 365-acre (148-hectare) airport with a 5,000-ft. (1,524-m.) runway and its own water and wastewater treatment plants. Regionally, the park is mid-way between the Kansas City and Dallas-Ft. Worth metropolitan areas.
      "We contend that the NAFTA corridor is [Oklahoma] Highway 69, and not Interstate 35," which runs north-south through Oklahoma City and the middle part of the state," says Don Berger, MidAmerica's marketing director. "The trucks out of the Midwest, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis come down I-44, and they're not going [through Tulsa and Oklahoma City] to get to Texas." They're using 69 to avoid those metros, says Berger, bringing the logistics advantage to the eastern part of the state — and to Pryor.
      Park tenant Shawn Spears, plant manager at Chevron Phillips Performance Pipe, might not be thinking much about NAFTA today, but the Pryor location has demonstrable logistics advantages in other ways. "Products have been shifted within our division to this facility because of the central U.S. location," he says. "A lot of the product at our Reno, Nevada, plant was shipping east, and they put it here, because we can ship east and west."

This editorial survey of investment opportunities in Oklahoma, was prepared by the staff of Conway Data Inc., Norcross, Ga., under the auspices of the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.       For more information call (800) 879-6552 or visit www.OKcommerce.gov.       For information on Site Selection editorial surveys, contact Mark Arend, Editor, at mark.arend@conway.com or (770) 325-3438.

      The location is close to trucking, highway and other logistics resources, says Spears, who ships throughout the U.S. and abroad via containers from Houston.
      When the Chevron and Phillips pipe-manufacturing units merged, it had to be determined which facilities and headquarters to maintain, a process "that is all about the numbers," says Spears. "We had to promote ourselves as one of the facilities that would remain. We did that, partly because of where we are — that allows us to have the efficiencies and the numbers that show that over history we were the one to lead in this area rather than another location." What's more, as redundant plants were closed elsewhere in the U.S., the production came to Oklahoma for its logistics advantages. "We could make the product efficiently enough here and we could ship it from here cheaper than the other plants could make it," says Spears. Location is everything.