Lavaca native new CEO at Hot Springs Chamber

Talk to Jim Fram and you’ll come away with the first impression that this guy knows what he’s doing.

The new Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce President and CEO has returned to the most natural job in the Natural State after a two decades absence.

Fram, a Lavaca native who had worked stints with the Harrison and Little Rock chambers of commerce, is about one month on his new Garland County job after tours of duty in Tulsa, Okla., and the midwest.

In his early career, Fram said chamber execs were into “smokestack chasing” and any job was a good job.

“We weren’t too much concerned about what it paid and what it was – just bring jobs and bring capital investment back,” Fram said.

However, the sophistication of industrial and jobs recruiting has evolved to new levels in his quarter century in the business with emphases on demographic data, pattern shifts, and assessing community assets and weaknesses.

“It’s become a very scientific process,” Fram said. “Today in most communities – as we do in Hot Springs and Little Rock and other places – we try to find those businesses that for a whole lot of reasons are compatible with your community.”

Fram’s chamber post covers more than Hot Springs proper. His territory is effectively all or part of Garland, Hot Spring and Clark counties, working in conjunction with the cities of Hot Springs, Malvern and Arkadelphia.

He’s got some assets to market, such as resorts and hotels, three pristine lakes, and more than a dozen championship golf courses.

“Those life quality things have become so important in recruiting business,” Fram said, but it’s not a position on which he can rest. “We have to constantly be upgrading our product and our product is our community and our city.”

Hot Springs’ manufacturing base has been a pleasant surprise to Fram. He sees potential to develop it further based on state efforts in the aviation industry and the fact that his last job – in Tulsa – exposed him to a variety of contacts in the aerospace industry.

“One of the big surprises I got in Hot Springs is – hidden out here among the lakes and golf courses and woods – Hot Springs has a half-dozen aerospace companies that manufacture components and parts for Boeing and Spirit and so on. There’s a very large workforce in the aerospace industry,” Fram said.