Originally Posted on Beaumont Enterprise
The city of Beaumont hopes to bet $85,000 on the roulette wheel of economic development and turn it into $51 billion.
The likelihood of the croupier pushing over that much in winnings is remote – unrealistic, perhaps – but the prospect of that much on the table is tantalizing.
Those stacks of chips include everything from industrial mega-projects, one of which – involving Exxon Mobil’s polyethylene plant expansion along U.S. 90 west of the Beaumont Municipal Airport – will be announced at noon Monday, to smaller, ground-level efforts by the University of Texas Medical Branch‘s new health clinic at the Gateway Shopping Center.
These efforts, great and small, are supported by the city’s annual contract with the Greater Beaumont Chamber of Commerce to perform as its economic development corporation.
The city’s share is $85,000, approved last week by City Council.
Specifically, the money is for retention of existing jobs, new business creation, expansion of existing business and attraction of new employees.
