WEST POINT — Cruising the fresh pavement on the newly opened Yokohama Boulevard, it can be easy to forget you are passing country homes that enjoyed solitude for so long.
No more. Yokohama is here.
The brand name written on a water tower that looms over a massive building can be seen from far, far away. Six months from now, Yokohama Tire Manufacturing Mississippi, which will eventually produce 1 million tires a year, will begin cranking out tires. But in West Point, the rubber has already hit the road.
For Katrina Litwiller and her family, who live on North TVA Road, the changes are impossible not to notice. They live adjacent to Yokohama Boulevard. When they moved there 12 years ago, it was open country.
“It was a secluded place to live,” she said, “but now it’s not.”
When Litwiller first heard the plant was coming to town, she said the family did not think much of it. Initially, Clay County officials told them Yokohama Boulevard was going to be a quarter of a mile from their property. Around May of 2013, they found out it would be much closer to home. At the time, Litwiller and her husband were in the middle of a major remodel of their home and could not move. They worried about the construction and noise.
The Litwiller’s have three young sons now, two at an active age during the roads’ construction. They used mother nature to fight back: They planted 30 trees in their yard in an attempt to block the road and its noise. They planted 80 more smaller trees in their backyard, which in years to come will help to block out the reality of a large manufacturing plant being so near.
Now that the construction of the road is completed, Litwiller said it isn’t so bad. The family plans to stay put. The road is not entirely a bad thing for the Litwiller’s either, now the drive to Columbus is 10 minutes faster.
“I think people will see it as a benefit now that the construction is completed,” Robbie Robinson, the mayor of West Point, said on Friday.
Back on Highway 45 Alternate and across the city line in West Point, local businesses are cashing in on the influx on construction workers needed to build the plant — hundreds have been at the site since construction began in 2013.
“Our sales tax collections have been very upbeat over the past 18 months,” Robinson told The Dispatch.
At the Sprint Mart, one of the Highway 45 Alternate convenience stores nearest to the Yokohama plant, business has been noticeably better.
“We have a lot of workers coming in for lunch,” Angela Hargrove, an assistant team leader at Sprint Mart, said. “Just in general, you can tell the traffic flow is up and there’s been an increase in our sales.”
Hargrove said sales in gas, food and miscellaneous items have all increased since construction started. On Thursday, she said daily sales were around $500 for non-fuel-related items. The four-year Sprint Mart employee said those numbers are really good.
“The community and the region is upbeat and positive,” Robinson said. “There’s a lot more happening in West Point and Clay County.”
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