Continental Resources Inc. said Monday it plans to move its corporate headquarters from Enid to Oklahoma City. Continental Resources has about 250 full-time employees in Enid. All 250 employees will be relocated to Oklahoma City. That will be a loss of 250 Enid residents plus family members.

Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett called the announcement the biggest business-related relocation for the city since the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder in July 2008.

That’s a pretty big statement and a huge gain for OKC. On the other side of the coin, the loss of Continental is possibly the largest loss to Enid since losing the Champlin oil refinery in the 1980′s.

Continental Resources Chairman and CEO Harold Hamm said relocating to Oklahoma’s largest city is part of the company’s growth strategy to triple in size during the next five years. Continental hopes to complete the move by the second half of 2012.

What does this mean for Enid? Only time will tell. Enid will survive, but a move like this does nothing to inspire future companies from looking closely at relocating to Enid. The loss of 250 well paid employees and their families is a huge loss. The effects of this move will be felt from the loss of business at downtown restaurants to the glut of homes entering the local housing market.

There most likely wasn’t anything Enid could have done to prevent this move. Enid has limited space, limited access to air travel, a limited pool of top executives and a lack of related corporate business partners. This is a profitable move for Continental and the shareholders that expect a return on their investments.

An Arts District, a movie theater, more restaurants and a Target would not have prevented this move. Fixing potholes, building a lake and tearing down a few old buildings will not bring Enid a replacement on the scale of Continental.

The lesson that should be learned from this move is that we may not be able to attract outside businesses to relocate to Enid but we darn sure better learn how to keep the ones we have. Enid currently has some major employers including Atwoods, AdvancePierre Foods, Vance, AFB, Parrish Enterprises Ltd., GEFCO, Groendyke and a few others.

The loss of one or two more major companies could really hurt a town of our size. Let’s work together and hang on to the companies we have. Let’s find out what they may need in the future and prepare for those needs now.

Once we’ve taken care of our current large employers, let’s start to attract new businesses and resources that are like minded and related to the industries that we already have.

This is an eye opener for the citizens of Enid. It’s time to stop the bickering over potholes and get busy maintaining and attracting high level companies with out-of-box ideas, city wide public support and innovative solutions to transportation, skilled labor and high tech communication.