SALISBURY — Economic development leaders across Wicomico County continue to try and help shape the region to attract new companies and industries.
Assisting in creating career training programs for potential employees, while also funding and helping the footprint of future businesses sprout out of the ground are some of the plans they have in place.
Salisbury Wicomico Economic Development Executive Director Dave Ryan met with the Salisbury City Council at a July 15 work session to highlight some of the larger projects the nonprofit organization has been working on.
Commonly known as SWED , the organization’s mission is to “enhance the socio-economic environment of Salisbury, Wicomico County and region through the preservation and creation of productive employment opportunities.”
SWED’s members include both the public and private sectors.
“We were founded in 1968 to help attract, retain and diversify the industrial base and the economy and the job base in the greater Salisbury area,” Ryan said.
Ryan told the city council that he is the second director in the organization’s 56-year history, and the nonprofit continues to accomplish its goals since 1968 with the help of many partners and a broad coalition of governments in the region.
“It’s an honor for me to be in this position,” Ryan said. “I’m from Salisbury and there is no greater intrinsic value than promoting your hometown to industries and employers throughout the county.”
Ryan said there are many key assets in Salisbury and throughout the lower Eastern Shore.
“One of those assets is the Salisbury Regional Airport,” Ryan said. "As you know, we have been working for several years now to establish an aviation maintenance technician school at the airport.
“The airport has roughly $150 million impact to our region and that’s in large part due to the presence of scheduled airline provided by Piedmont Airlines, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Airlines.”
Ryan said they were aware several years ago of a shortage of pilots and aviation mechanics. He explained that coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, they predicted that the situation would only get worse.
According to a report by the international aviation consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the industry was expected to face a shortage of 12,000 to 18,000 aviation maintenance workers in 2023, which is predicted to rise in the future.
“So, we started working to establish a pipeline of talent so we could train local people for jobs that are already here vacant on the grounds of the airfield,” Ryan said.
SWED, in partnership with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Piedmont Airlines and the Salisbury-Wicomico County Regional Airport, is in the process of establishing an FAA-certified aircraft maintenance technician program that will be housed in part of Piedmont’s current space at the airport.
Ryan said they are currently waiting for their FAA certificate and anticipate the school to host its first class in January 2025.
“(We’re) working together with the airlines and the state government, an HBCU with a large presence of aviation, including an aviation science degree, a pilot training program and an aviation maintenance technician school,” Ryan said. “It’s perhaps unparalleled anywhere else in America.
"It’s a signature program we are designing and establishing, and I think you’ll see a significant growth at the airport in years to come. … I’m not sure we would be having those conversations on growth but for the presence of this school.”
Attracting new companies
Another way Wicomico County can diversify its economy, according to Ryan, is through “spec” buildings.
Speculative, or “spec” buildings, are built by developers to attract tenants during or shortly after construction.
Ryan told the city council that there are nearly 17 acres in the front lot of Westwood Commerce Park where trees were recently removed near U.S. 50.
“St. John Properties — and they have signs up now, out of Baltimore — has discovered the greater Salisbury area,” Ryan said. “They are acquiring a significant amount of acreage, and they build on a speculative basis, typically in 40,000-square-foot sections. When one is half full, they’ll build another. When that is half full, they’ll build another.
“It's a significant investment and I think that it is indicative of perhaps the confidence they see in the future of Salisbury and the greater Salisbury area.”
Additionally, Ryan said there are two “decent sized industrial prospects” with a number of new jobs coming in the future which will be located in a space consisting of 100,000 square feet.
Ryan said the Salisbury area is currently short of large-bay industrial spaces, consisting of places of at least 100,000 square feet, with 32-foot ceilings, 50-foot column widths and 18 loading docks on 25 acres. He said SWED gets calls from real estate brokers or corporate entities asking if they have spaces that they can rent quickly.
“And the answer is yes, or the answer is no,” Ryan said. “More often than not, if it’s no, then they’ll move on until they find that somewhere in that Mid-Atlantic region if that’s where they need to base.”
To combat that, Ryan said they have designed a shovel-ready site approval process where they partner with a landowner and fund the design of a 100,000-square-foot facility expandable to 200,000 square feet.
Targeted economic sectors are manufacturing, logistics or other industrial companies, according to SWED’s website.
“We design that facility, and we go through the site approval process,” Ryan said. … “The sooner we can do that the higher tax base we get and the more jobs we get on a faster rate So those latter two projects, you’re looking at roughly $75 million to $80 million and so in real property investments over the next, we anticipate, the next two or two and a half years or so.”
Ryan said the distribution industry is much larger now than in the past.
“Those employers tend to be bigger,” Mayor Randy Taylor added. “They tend to pay more, and they tend to stay around longer. Those are the jobs we are looking to attract.”
Reach Managing Editor Richard Caines at rcaines@iniusa.org.
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