As business grows in Houston, jobs follow

HOUSTON, Miss. (WCBI) – Business is moving forward in Houston, and the economic impact is being felt across Chickasaw County.

Franklin Corporation has been the heartbeat behind economics for Houston and Chickasaw County for years and as its heart continues to beat, success flows throughout the area.

Franklin Corporation is growing even more on Franklin Drive.

A 60,000 square foot warehouse designed to house imported components will soon be sitting on this lot.

“We used these components and put in our factories and actually, they’ve filled up our factories and taken away production space, so we’re building this warehouse to move all of these components; silk, cover kits, other components, that we’re sourcing into this warehouse, which will be somewhat of a high-tech warehouse,” says Franklin Corporation CEO and owner, Hassell Franklin.

The expansion will free up space and with more space, comes more room for growth, which leads to jobs.

“This will really give us room in both our plants to probably put a couple of additional lines in each plant, after we move these raw materials out of our plants, so we’re going forward.”

And when the global plant moves forward, so does Houston.

“We are thriving. We’re moving things forward. We’re trying to help this community with more jobs because everything is relative. What we do downtown, what we do to our neighboring, inner city part of things, our infrastructure,” says Houston Mayor Stacey Parker.

Parker says more jobs mean everything to a community with less than 4,000 people.

“A tax base that’s going to be created, not only that, you’ve got an extra 60 that are going to be here living, who will hopefully spend their money, which is sales tax and now as we’ve got the tourism tax, that’s even more for our tourism tax dollars to increase, which we can do more.”

Construction for the new warehouse is expected to complete by early November.