Little Rock has a $1 billion opportunity at the Port. We've seen this movie before, and this time, we want to see a different ending.

A little over 50 years ago, a young entrepreneur named Fred Smith walked into Little Rock with a strange idea: an airline that flew packages instead of people. He had bought a company here, and he wanted to build his business here. He needed a longer runway and a little imagination from the airport commission, but ended up with neither. So he drove 130 miles east, where Memphis offered him a $6 million loan, ramps, and hangars. On April 17, 1973, FedEx delivered its first 186 packages. One trade publication later called Memphis' decision "the single most important economic development decision made in any major U.S. city in the past 30 years."

Today, FedEx employs about 30,000 people in the Memphis area. Its hub anchors an entire regional economy. Every time an Arkansan drives Interstate 40 east and sees those purple and orange tails lined up on the tarmac, they're looking at the cost of a city that couldn't see the opportunity it had.

Now Google is at our door.

The company is in the early stages of planning a $1 billion data center at the Port of Little Rock. Data centers have the potential to have a positive economic impact on Little Rock, Pulaski County, and central Arkansas as a whole. Recently, Little Rock Regional Chamber President and CEO Jay Chesshir said that a single data........

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