Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Hardman Again To Lead CCIC

Officers for the next two years were elected by the Board of Directors of the Clark County Industrial Commission, Thursday, Feb. 19.

Once again, Brown Hardman will be the president, while Phil Robkin was tabbed as vice president for the coming term. The secretary/treasurer will be Ron Easley.

And, again, the executive vice president is state Rep. Percy Malone.

Malone gave an update on Rohr Industries, first telling the CCIC the company is no longer Rohr, but B.F. Goodrich.

He's been working closely with the site selection group from Rohr for the past several months, working to get everything in place the company would need to locate in Arkadelphia's Industrial Park.

At the state level, Malone said, everything is ready, as he helped procure a grant the company wanted to make it economically feasible for them to relocate to the area.

"I feel in the next 10 days to two weeks," he said, "we'll hear something on their plans. I feel really good about this project."

The CCIC has been working with Rohr since the company first considered locating in Clark County in 1992. A building was built for the aerospace industry, but because of economic situations, has remained empty.

However, Malone pointed out it is not a "done deal" with Rohr, as no contracts have been signed and no formal announcements made either way. There has, though, been a lot of activity which he said looked favorable.

"We've been here before," he said. "They've changed directions. This will be different than the organization we talked about originally."

Malone said if the announcement comes through and the company locates in Arkadelphia, this will mean families can move to the county, knowing if one of the region's industries lays them off they can move to another job.

The possibility of a permanent training center in the industrial park was also brought up by Malone. He said this is an idea he's had for a while and the CCIC has discussed.

Malone has talked with people at Ouachita Technical College of Malvern, the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope and Henderson State University about training the workers.

When the General Assembly gathers in 1999, Malone plans to seek funding for the center as a pilot project.

Instructors will hold class in the evenings, most likely, for the people taking the classes. This will help them be trained for the jobs available in Clark County.

In addition, he said, it will help recruit more business and industry to the area.

Mike McFarland, chairman of the Human Resources Committee, told the members the first meeting, held Jan. 27, was a success.

The organizational meeting was held at Polycarbon's plant, with representatives from business, industry, banks, schools, universities and hospitals on hand.

He said the committee's purpose is to facilitate the exchange of ideas in the area of human resources, with different companies telling what they do, what works and how they implement their programs.

Locations of the meetings will be rotated on a monthly basis, with Elk Horn Bank sponsoring the first meeting earlier this month. McFarland said there were 27 people on hand.

Meetings, he said, will be held on the third Tuesday of each month, from 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.

The final order of business was an update on the membership drive by Karen Jester.

She said the CCIC has 257 members to date and has collected more than $10,000.

"We'd like to have 500 members," Jester said, "but everything's going well."