In front of all the cameras last Friday morning, local and state officials smiled and said, “Cheese!”
While we like cheese on our burgers and nachos, cheese in our tacos and cheese mixed into our salads, we don’t think about cheese so much here.
Maybe Sundays, when Green Bay is playing at Lambeau Field and cheeseheads fill the stands.
Maybe when we’re hungry and Cheddar’s sounds good.
But as of last Friday, we became all about cheese.
With the announcement that Great Lakes Cheese wants to build a huge facility here and employ more than 500 in good-paying jobs, we saw green, if not bleu.
It was fun watching everyone jumping on board the good news wagon, including three Republicans in Austin. Gov. Greg Abbott, challenged by the pandemic and more recent statewide power outage, delivered the good news.
And promised to be here for the ribbon cutting in coming months, wearing a cheesehead.
That we have to see.
This being baseball season, we’d have to say the Development Corporation hit a home run. Maybe a grand slam.
Great Lakes was offered a tasty incentive package, and Abilene seems to be a good place to be in Texas, near the Fort Worth-Dallas area and other existing customers. Great Lakes serves retailers and food service operations.
DCOA’s head cheese, Misty Mayo, said a finalist city in Tennessee actually had a better incentive offer but we still won out. And although Texas’ dairy industry has shifted to the Panhandle, cities there were not considered as finalists.
This will take some time, so for now, we advise Abilene to keep calm and cheese on.
Abilene Reporter News
