ODC meeting

With no votes on the agenda, reports from various agencies took up most of the Odessa Development Corp.’s board meeting Thursday.

Mike George, chief executive officer of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce, said there is still hope for reopening Flint Hills Resources’ Odessa chemical plant, which stopped production earlier this year, laying off 395 people.

Bill Gilliam, former chairman of Rexene Corp., is looking for investors to help reopen the plant, George said.

"He’s out there working very hard to find the money to purchase the plant," George said.

George said that Koch Industries, the Flint Hills parent company based in Wichita, Kan., had scheduled a meeting Monday to seek bidders for the plant’s demolition but delayed the decision.

Also Thursday, James Beauchamp, executive director of the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance, said that state representatives Tryon Lewis, R-Odessa, and Tom Craddick, R-Midland, and state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, met with officials from the Texas Department of Transportation when they were in the area Wednesday.

"They made it clear that we have projects that need funding, or the agency isn’t going to get the kind of support they’re looking for," Beauchamp said.

In other news, Christi Callicoate of CVA Advertising said that a planned article on Odessa and Midland business in Southwest Airlines’ "Spirit" in-flight magazine could be expanded to 36 pages from a planned 24 because of interest from local advertisers.

But things have hit some snags with Odessa’s promotion on "Inside Business," a five-minute segment that airs on national cable networks. ODC is paying $19,000 for the piece. Callicoate said a rough copy of the segment showed a quality-of-life scene featuring stock footage of "a huge lake with some beautiful pine trees" as well as towers from a nuclear power plant.

"Some of their stock footage was a little bit off," she said, adding that the segment is being re-edited.