Group pressing area's advantages

By NANCY MADSEN
TIMES STAFF WRITER

Drum Country Business soon will have a new tool to attract companies to the north country.

Consultant Ady-Voltedge, Madison, Wis., is completing a regional prospectus to send to site selectors for businesses. It also is making industry-specific inserts that highlight employment and other statistics.

Together, the five pages of information will highlight the region's competitive advantages: high quality of life, Fort Drum, high quality and availability of work force and low wages compared with other places in New York.

"Those are the things the three counties are looking to market," said Michelle L. Capone, who has worked with Drum Country Business as the senior project development specialist with the Development Authority of the North Country. "More and more in today's global economy, we have to work together and we're identified as a region — that's how businesses are siting themselves."

The initiative started with a "North Country Business and Resources Gap Analysis," commissioned by the Fort Drum Regional Liaison Organization and completed in 2007.

Economic development agencies behind the Drum Country Business initiative include Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties' industrial development agencies, Lewis County Office of Economic Development and the Fort Drum organization. National Grid has contributed to the effort.

"The consultant gives us a head start with some contacts with site selection and businesses," said Eric J. Virkler, Lewis County economic development director. "It gives us the possibility of attracting something new."

For this approach, the consultant identified back-office support services, renewable energy and food processing industries as the best fit for the region.

Many support services firms, including real estate, insurance and financial services, are in the New York City metropolitan area.

"We provide a location that is competitive," Ms. Capone said.

The region recently was named "Energy Valley" by the state Senate. And the region hosts cheese, meat packaging and chick hatching facilities.

Lowville has the Kraft Foods cream cheese plant and New Bremen has the kosher dairy processing plant Lewis County Dairy.

"There's more potential," Mr. Virkler said. "There are definitely opportunities with the work force to continue to build in that industry."

Economic developers talk to defense-related firms as they try to attract them to stay after they come to work at Fort Drum.

The mailings should be ready in a month or so. The Drum Country website, www.drumcountry.com, also will be updated soon to include more information.