Business View Civil and Municipal | June 2022

41 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 6 PAR I S , TEXAS The county has around 50,000 residents with Paris as an economic hub when it comes to jobs and services. Maureen Hammond, Executive Director of the Paris Economic Development Corporation believes the location of the city makes it the perfect place to put down roots. She explains, “I think what makes Paris special is the fact that we’re positioned perfectly in a geographical sense. We’re close enough to the metroplex to have access to world class museums, shopping, entertainment and sports, but we’re far enough from DFW to have a high quality of life and low cost of living. We also have a low cost of doing business. From an economic development perspective, for a community of this size to attract Fortune 500 companies like Campbells and Kimberly-Clark demonstrates we have a robust manufacturing base. That’s one of the things that impressed me when I took the post about two years ago, but it’s also something I hear over and over again from businesses and people I interact with.” The municipality owns 400 acres dedicated to two industrial parks – the Northwest Industrial and Innovation Park and the Gene Stallings Business Park, where they are targeting advanced manufacturing facilities and aerospace tech companies. Hammond says, “Advanced manufacturing is really our sweet spot. Twenty percent of our workforce is in the manufacturing industry and the multiplier on those jobs is quite high.” The city’s largest employer is the Paris Regional Medical Center, which services people from all over North Eastern Texas and South Eastern Oklahoma. The city’s economic development board works with Paris Junior College, Paris Texas Independent School District, North Lamar Independent School District, and Chisum Independent School District to create innovative workforce development programs to meet the needs of businesses. They’ve seen a five percent increase in employment and expect to create more than 1,000 new jobs in the next five years,