Mississippi lawmakers will consider two incentive packages Friday that could bring 1,800 jobs to the state, including 951 to Lowndes County.
Gov. Haley Barbour”s office announced Wednesday that a $75 million package is being considered for Calisolar, a California-based solar silicon manufacturer, which plans to locate in the Lowndes County industrial park. State Sen. Terry Brown, R-Columbus, told The Associated Press that the new jobs could pay between $40,000 and $50,000 per year. The chairman of Calisolar”s board of directors is John Correnti, the former CEO of SeverCorr (now Severstal) of Columbus.
An additional $100 million package is being considered for HCL CleanTech, a bio-technology company, which plans to build its headquarters in Olive Branch and construct a research and development center in Grenada. Three additional plants would be located in Booneville, Hattiesburg and Natchez. That project would create 800 jobs with an average salary of $67,000 plus benefits.
Dr. Rick Young, president of East Mississippi Community College, said the college”s workforce trainers have been in communications with several unnamed industries, determining what they will need in terms of local training for employees. EMCC has provided specialized training for Weyerhaeuser, Paccar, Severstal, Eurocopter, Aurora and other major industries that have relocated to the area.
“We really place a lot of emphasis on being able to take an individual that wants to work, whether qualified or not, and work with them to get the educational background they need,” Young said. “We”re about opportunity. Any time you have new jobs coming in, and jobs on the level I hear these are, it”s a great thing for the area. It”s just another jewel in the existing crown of industries we have in Lowndes County.”
Calisolar plans to locate east of Industrial Park Road, directly behind Mitchell Beer Distributing, on 250-260 acres, said Joe Higgins, CEO of the Columbus-Lowndes Development Link. The facility will be around a million square feet, more than twice the size of the Paccar plant and about half the size of the Severstal steel mill, both of which are already in the industrial park. The Link has been in talks with Calisolar since Aug. 27, 2010.
The facility will use around 170 MW of power, about 40 MW more than the entire city of Columbus. In comparison, Severstal uses about three times the entire city.
Higgins said the plant will take about a year and a half to build and will have “a tremendous impact.” Construction could begin as early as this fall, with as many as 1,000 construction workers needed.
Wooing such industries is the Link”s job, but a lot of work goes on behind the scenes, involving cooperation with other groups like the Lowndes County Board of Supervisors, the Lowndes County Industrial Development Authority, etc.
“There”s been a team working on this a year,” Higgins said. “I don”t think (people) understand … this is not a one-person or two-person or three-person deal. This is an entire community figuring out a plan and working the plan.”
Phil Hardwick, a Mississippi State University professor who specializes in economic development, said Mississippi is likely to see even more projects like this over the next few years as the state takes advantage of federal money for “green initiative” projects.
Such moves represent a gradual shift from cheap labor jobs to knowledge-based jobs, and when companies like this relocate to the South, they tend to attract similar companies, in a sort of cluster effect. Those industries attract suppliers, and the cluster expands.
“That”s what the workforce of the future is all about,” Hardwick said. “Thanks to the auto industry, every relocation seems to be higher tech than the last one, and it seems to be the South they”re coming to. As the word gets out, it”s just good for the South.”
The Golden Triangle region in particular seems to be seeing a boom of industrial expansion, a fact Hardwick attributes to Mississippi”s status as a right-to-work state, the cluster effect and simply time.
Twenty-five years ago, Hardwick saw a report stating that the Golden Triangle was one of the best places to locate an industry, but it has taken a while to happen.
“It seems to be taking off now,” he said. “It”s almost like it feeds on itself.”
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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