This week, local and state officials, along with executives from Steel Dynamics, Inc., gathered just south of the steel-mill for a ground-breaking ceremony for SDI’s $100-million expansion.
At a time when there has been little new industrial development, SDI’s plans to expand is reassuring. Nothing says “commitment” like a large cash investment.
It is a clear sign that SDI, which bought the plant from Severstal in October 2014, is not simply committing to sticking around, but sees a bright future in our community and wants to be a major part of our continuing economic development success story.
The bouquets tossed at the feet of SDI’s leadership were well deserved, but as the event’s master of ceremonies, LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins went back further in the story, before SDI and came along, to a time when the Lowndes County Industrial Park featured little more than a “Open for Business” sign.
It was 2005. Higgins picked up Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders and drove him to empty 1,400-acre site.
Higgins had a proposition to make.
He had spoken with a Russian steel company, which might be interested in a good chunk of that site — about 900 acres. Higgins wanted to know if the board of supervisors give him the green light to pursue the deal.
Sanders said yes. In fact, Higgins told the audience at Monday’s event, Sanders last words to him that day were: “You had better get this.”
The rest, as the saying goes, is history, although it’s doubtful that either Higgins or Sanders recognized as the Roger Bannister moment in our area’s economic development history.
Bannister, you may recall, was the English runner, who was the first to run the mile in less than four minutes. For years, runners had come close to that mark, but it wasn’t until May 6, 1954, that Bannister did what no other runner had ever been able to do.
A curious thing happened after that. Runners began to regularly run sub-four-minute miles. It was as though all that was needed was for one runner to prove it could be done.
Suddenly, what had once seemed impossible became something of an expectation. Bannister’s feat proved that runners had the ability to break the 4-minute mile standard all along; all that was lacking was confidence in that ability.
“Severstal changed how we thought about ourselves,” Higgins noted Monday. “It changed our thinking about what was possible.”
Severstal was, as Higgins put it, the Golden Triangle’s bell cow and since it’s arrival our area has become a dominant player in Mississippi industrial development.
So, as we wait for the next “big deal” to develop, we have reason to be encouraged.
Severstal gave birth to that optimism, SDI has confirmed it.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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