Karen: This is PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook; I’m Karen Love, the host and Founder. And so today I’m here with Frances Castaneda Dyess and she’s the President of the Houston East End Chamber of Commerce. Welcome back to the playbook Frances.

Frances: Thank you Karen for having me back.

Karen: Well you know manufacturing is still on the upswing and we really feel like it could be caused by the low cost of the natural gas and how the infrastructure is going to be really affected by that. So can you give us a little more on the infrastructure issues?

Frances: Absolutely. Well that’s on top of everyone’s mind, including the Port of Houston, who are investing lots of money in order to help with dredging, with railroad lines and also with road infrastructure.

Karen: Interesting.

Frances: In addition to that we’ve got companies like Cedar Port Industrial Park who is investing about $22 million in their infrastructure to keep up with this big demand. They also have about 11,000 acres that are going to be developed near the Houston Ship Channel. So everyone knows how important infrastructure is and if we don’t get our roads and our rail and everything else in line then we’re going to be missing the boat. So it’s wonderful that these collaborations are happening.

Karen: Yes, from your mouth to God’s ears, that’s fantastic. Well thank you for sharing that with us and we’d like to talk more about the port and things that are affected by all of that as well.

Frances: I’d love to.

Karen: Fantastic, I’ll look forward to that. So for other port related topics visit PKFTexas.com/portadvisoryservices. And this has been another Thought Leader Production brought to you by the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook.