Since I retired as a media CEO and started digging into Coastal Mississippi’s future on my SuperTalk Mississippi show, I’ve had over 1,400 conversations that keep me fired up and more focused on the potential of our region.
So many of those conversations have been really important – statewide leaders, economic development leaders, business leaders. But one that really stuck out was back in June of last year with John Hairston, CEO at Hancock Whitney Bank. We got deep into where the coast is headed, and it hit me: our three economic development groups in Harrison, Hancock, and Jackson Counties are working their tails off to bring jobs and growth to their corners. They’re doing excellent work, no doubt about it. But if we want to unlock this region’s full potential, we’ve got to dream bigger and we’ve got to do it together.
I told John about what the Golden Triangle’s Joe Max Higgins said about the coastal region being an “800-pound gorilla.” John dropped a line that’s been rattling in my head ever since: “The coast is an 800-pound gorilla that doesn’t know it.”
He’s dead on. We’ve got the muscle – great schools, a workforce with grit and loyalty, talent flowing in from the military, a great quality of life – but we’re not swinging our weight like we could. Why? As John put it, we’re “three counties with different priorities,” and too often, “we get so focused on our little part of the pie that we miss the larger corpus of growth opportunities.” Our economic development teams on the coast are hustling hard for their counties, and that’s a hell of a start. But it’s not enough to just play our own games; we need a regional playbook.
John talked about our geography – 40 miles long, 8 to 10 miles thick, half of it water. We’ve only got 180 degrees to grow, not a full 360. Tough break, sure, but no excuse. John’s take on it? If we could get our municipalities, counties, and economic development groups “truly in consensus” about how and where to grow – teamed up with a juiced-up Mississippi Development Authority – “we can make magic happen on the coast.”
Imagine if we spoke with one voice in the big transformative opportunities. John added: “We need our leaders to develop a local plan and a regional plan, and don’t cheat the regional one just to deal with the local.”
That’s the kicker. Our teams are out there fighting for jobs and progress in their counties day in and day out. But we’re not dreaming big enough as a region. John pointed to the Panhandle of Florida being one of Hancock Whitney’s fastest-growing markets and they look a lot like Coastal Mississippi. Here, we’ve got Deepwater Horizon money – what John called “the last of the free money” – and he’s worried we’re not aiming at the big, catalytic stuff that could pay off over decades.
I feel that, too. I’ve been talking about it and writing about it. We’ve bounced back from so many challenging battles, from Hurricane Katrina to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, thanks to leaders and business folks stepping up. But now, what’s our next big swing like Stennis Space Center, Ingalls expansion, the gaming transformation?
John sees tech, manufacturing, and clean industry with a touch of heavy stuff. We’ve got the goods – top-tier education, a work ethic that stacks up anywhere, a quality of life that’s only gotten better since Katrina. He’s right about our schools – our high school grads and community colleges like Mississippi Gulf Coast are as good as they come. Employers have jobs they’d love to bring here if we can grow the workforce.
So why aren’t we landing billion-dollar deals like Savannah, Georgia, or the Golden Triangle? It’s not our economic development groups slacking – they’re pouring it on for their counties. It’s us not tying that hustle into one, loud regional roar.
Raising the bar doesn’t mean starting over. It means taking the excellent work that our three teams are doing – scrapping for every job and dollar – and dreaming bigger together. Maybe it’s something like a “Coastal Mississippi Development Alliance” to pull it into one punch. We’ve got the talent and the fight, just not the full view of the pie. John’s got faith that it will happen one day. Me too. Let’s make it sooner than later. Our competitors aren’t sleeping. They plan to sleep when they’re dead.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of SuperTalk Mississippi Media.
