Holmes County, Miss.’s first strategic plan opens opportunities for industrial park

Key Takeaways

Holmes County, Miss. was tired of just being for homes.

Without any major employers based in the county, many residents travel 40-50 minutes to go to work, in other counties. While they’re there, they’re eating and shopping in those other counties, generating tax revenue in those other counties and then coming home, tired and full.

When Supervisor Debra Mabry and County Administrator Tiffany Williams saw the opportunity to apply for technical assistance and a $50,000 planning grant through the NACo Rural Leaders for Economic Mobility program, they saw an opportunity to pave the way for local jobs. The program is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and chose 10 teams that include county elected officials and staff.

“We’re not necessarily looking for 500 or 600 jobs all at once, but just 50 jobs will make a difference for Holmes County,” Mabry said. “If we have these jobs, you’ll see other business open to support them. You’ll have a hotel, then a restaurant, then a service station.”

Since its peak of 40,000 residents in 1940, the population of Holmes County has declined 57% to 17,000 in 2020, due in large part to disinvestment. Its poverty rate of 40.2% is more than double the 10% statewide average, and only 44% of the working-age population participates in the labor force. 

“Our county has a sort of apathy,” Mabry said. “The citizens feel that we’re not going to get anything here. They’ve seen jobs move out of town and feel like we’re bleeding.”

The county’s greatest opportunity lies in its 330-acre industrial park, close to an interstate, a state highway, an airport and rail lines. 

“The county has been in possession of the property well over 20 years with little to no development,” Williams said. “Whenever there’s development nearby, it’s happening somewhere else.”

The county contributed some money on top of the program grant to develop a master plan for the site, assessing its infrastructure needs and other measures necessary to make it “shovel ready,” and that plan has already persuaded state legislators to allocate $1 million to the project. 

“This is the first time we’ve ever had a master plan for the site,” Williams said. “It’s something that shows the thought and the work that we’ve put into it and that we are willing to direct to it.”

The park is going to need about $15 million more — the water treatment plant needs maintenance that has been deferred for years, the water storage tank needs extensive rehabilitation and the city’s wastewater treatment plant will be insufficient to support much growth. 

“Our goal is to have this site looking good, get everything certified and prepared to the point where it’s a place the governor would want to recommend to industry looking to locate in Mississippi,” Williams said.

The site is best suited for advanced manufacturing and logistics, and the county’s workforce has timber experience, making the area well-suited for wood product manufacturing. Nissan automotive has a strong presence regionally, too.

Mabry and Williams have been vocal about the RLEM program and the learning opportunities it entails, bringing home stories from other participating counties and recipes for growth.

“I got excited because I could see how communities brought themselves out of poverty,” Mabry said “And even though I knew we might not be able to produce the same results, we could learn from them and bring some of the ideas home.

“When we came back and had a meeting with the mayors, the local citizens, the business owners and all those people we brought together, when they got excited, that just made me more excited for the possibilities of what we could do.”

 Williams sees the potential for young people, like her 13-year-old, to stay in Holmes County in adulthood.

“I often see my generation leave home because they don’t see, they don’t see hope, they don’t see things for their children to do,” she said. “Our kids deserve great education, great places to play, to feel safe in their environment. And what excites me the most is that we actually have something that can actually change the future for our children,” so they aren’t leaving for Texas or Atlanta.

The engineering plan maps out a seven-year timeline to prepare the site, and a range of targets for fundraising, including the Appalachian Regional Commission and Delta Regional Authority, the state Legislature, congressional earmarks and USDA Rural Development programs. The biggest challenge, the report says, will be coming up with a local match for some of these funding opportunities.

Mabry knows that Holmes County residents form a workforce that’s ready to make the most of the opportunity to build industry at home.

“They already drive almost an hour each way to go to work, so you know they’re dedicated,” she said. “If we could make Holmes County a place to live and work, we’re going to change some things.”

From other RLEM counties, the pair learned to use what their county has and capitalize on it. Participants went on three site visits over the course of 22 months in the program.

“We have so much history here, but nobody will want to come and see it if they’re just going to be looking at markers,” Mabry said. “We need things for them to do, restaurants and stores. Those are things that grow once you have people in town during the workday, and that makes the industrial park our key to all of this — growing out of poverty and becoming the county where people want to live and work.

“This industrial park is our Field of Dreams. If we build it, they will come.”