Presentations about economics and local economic development work took center stage Wednesday at the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s final signature event of the year. 

Stephen Jury, a New York-based global investment strategist from JP Morgan Private Bank, and RegionTrack economist Dr. Mark Snead, provided overviews at the State of the Economy and Tulsa’s Future 2023 Annual Meeting at the Renaissance Tulsa Hotel & Convention Center. 

Sharing the program was Tulsa’s Future, the Chamber-led regional economic development partnership whose ’23 successes were chronicled by Ginger Kollmann, head of the Private Bank for JP Morgan Chase.

Arthur Jackson, the Chamber’s senior vice president of economic development, moderated a panel that featured Andrew Ralston, director of economic development at Tulsa Ports; Will Hague, general manager at Expleo USA; and Jonathan Gray, public policy director at 3SUN USA (Enel North America). 

The event was presented by WeStreet Credit Union. 

Jury told an audience of close to 500 that United States has “the best economy, the most innovative economy and you should be proud of being an American.”

The state’s two largest cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, continue to add most of the jobs in the state, Snead said. 

Tulsa’s Future’s achievements were celebrated extensively. Since its establishment in 2005, Tulsa’s Future has generated more than 80,000 jobs and more than $6 billion in capital investment. Over that span, at least 200 public and private investors have supported the initiative.

During the panel discussion, Jackson recalled a meeting Chamber officials and partners had with 3SUN USA (Enel North America) at the PGA Championship in May 2022 at Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa. 

Those talks led to 3SUN USA’s announcement about a year later that it planned to invest more than $1 billion to build a solar cell and panel manufacturing plant at the Port of Inola, making it the largest economic development project in state history. 

“Oklahoma got first bite of the apple, first crack,” Gray said. 

He added that the company plans to break ground early next year on the first phase of the project, which will include a 1.5-million-square-foot plant. 

To help accommodate the plant, Tulsa Ports and partners plan to investabout $150 million into infrastructure improvements at the Tulsa Port of Inola during the next two years, Ralston said. 

“I don’t think we understood really the scale of what the solar panel manufacturing project was going to look like,” Ralston said of initial talks with the company. “…We were all pleasantly surprised as we went through the RFP (request for proposal) process to find out just how large this project was and how game-changing it will be for our region and state.”