ODESSA, Texas — Odessa Development Corporation met Thursday and, as part of their agenda, discussed and approved their General Development Plan for the 2023-2024 year.
The General Development Plan is quite simple: expand businesses and help the city of Odessa grow.
However, some changes were made to this year's plan to update it.
“All of these things are what we’re going to be working on through this General Development Plan," Odessa Development Corporation President Kris Crow said. "So we approved it today, but as Mr. (Jeff) Russel said earlier, we want that to kind of be a living, breathing organism here to where it’s able to move, it’s able to change, it’s able to update with the needs of the city as we move forward.”
However, no matter the updates, the plan still has the same goals.
“Our goals are threefold. We want to recruit new employees, we want to retain them, and we want to retire them," Crow said. "One of the things that we found are that, while it’s hard to bring new employees in from other areas into Odessa, it’s going to be a lot easier to grow our own employees.”
But how does Odessa Development Corporation plan to attract those employees?
One plan is to look towards the youth of Odessa and help them build a roadmap towards finding a career and keeping it.
“Maybe we work with ECISD, maybe we work with Odessa College, maybe we work with UTPB and show these kids, hey, if you want to be a contractor, maybe if you want to be a machinist, maybe if you want to be an engineer, maybe there’s a way that economic development can help carve that path for you," Crow said. "Then give you that career path about working with ECISD, OC or UTPB to help them from a financial side to get them to that end result.”