Small Texas town mounts big effort in attracting and keeping industry talent.
Interstate Highway 20 spans over 1,500 miles, connecting a dozen states from Texas to South Carolina across the southern United States. In a Conway Projects Database report that calculated all new projects in counties that I-20 intersected over the last two years, the clear winner by metropolitan area was Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington with 772 projects announced or under construction.
Site Selection spoke with Rush Harris, Marshall Economic Development Corporation (EDC) executive director about past and upcoming projects and expansions near the I-20 corridor in Marshall, Texas, just two hours east of Dallas.
Prospects for Development Along I-20
Marshall, with a population of 24,000 and a location 45 minutes west of Shreveport, Louisiana, is intersected by Interstate 20, a vital artery for business and economic development in the East Texas region.
“Marshall is an older community that has a lot of legacy manufacturing. If companies need expansion, we have that room for expansion. We want to keep everything that we got,” Harris says. “Because we are funded in part by sales taxes, we don’t want to compete with the real estate market.”
A Texas and Pacific Railway advertisement recalls how Marshall was one of the originally planned major hubs on the Texas and Pacific Railway that was started in the 1870s and ceased operations in 1976.
Photo courtesy of Texas & Pacific Railway Museum and Gift Shop
Five- or two-acre lots can be commonly sold in town to interested site buyers. Harris notes that when working on projects, he has to offer buyers something with higher acreages (20 to 30 acres).
“Sometimes we provide developer incentives,” Harris says. “We work with private real estate developers, but we provide bigger incentives.”
There is an ongoing Texas Department of Transportation project to widen I-20 and upgrade the road in many areas, Harris adds. The result should provide higher levels of safety, mobility and accessibility, and the project should have a net positive for economic activity around Marshall and surrounding regions.
There is pressure west of Marshall near Dallas in cities where goods are being slowed down due to bottlenecks. Plans for expanding I-20 are in the works to free up this congestion.
“I-20 [is] widening to three lanes near one of the exits of Marshall to Longview. Lots of inbound traffic from Louisiana,” Harris says, “lots of truck traffic from the east to Dallas. Freeing up some space is a good thing for us ultimately for commuter traffic.”
In Texas, the Interstate Highway system runs over 3,000 miles and is made up of dozens of routes. I-69 has three different crossings in the Lone Star State, following the edge of the state around the Gulf toward Houston, picking up Houston traffic, toward Marshall and Texarkana. Another road project yet to be completed, I-369 near Marshall, is expected to open in a few years.
For Marshall, this spells opportunity for those in the Dallas and Houston markets to find less expensive, advantageous land where these Interstates may cross in the future, Harris notes.
“We try to recruit business and help them expand. We develop those properties along I-20 with the hopes that we can use those as tools to recruit new business to the industry and area,” Harris explains. “Manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, headquarters and transportation. We help them find a spot, or if we don’t have a spot, we connect them with the landowners who do.
“We also work with governments to find incentives, like grants or tax abatement,” he adds. “We act as their go to for community information, connection with utilities, labor force data and what our workforce looks like.”
Texas Town Example of Economic Opportunity
“We are in what I call the pretty part of Texas,” Harris says. “It’s a beautiful place and pretty family-centric. When visitors and interested parties come and see Marshall, they like that it is different from Austin, Dallas and San Antonio.
“What gets them very interested is these little, smaller communities, universities, technical schools, all spotted along that I-20 corridor,” says Harris. “It makes for good workforce development and is one of the drivers in all of our economic development.”
The town of Marshall has a big city feel due to its amenities and labor shed, picking up people who live in Shreveport and Longview and other areas that may not have larger industrial areas.
Further, the town invests in upskilling younger generations with the “WE Align” initiative, which consists of employers and educators that meet monthly to talk about skills needed in K-12 through college.
