The Golden Triangle continues to be a sought-after region for industrial growth, even during a pandemic, Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins told the Starkville board of aldermen at its Friday work session.
Higgins presented Mayor Lynn Spruill and the board with an update on potential projects in the region, including at the North Star Industrial Park under construction at the northwest intersection of Highways 389 and 82.
In September, Tennessee Valley Authority designated the Golden Triangle region a Rural Certified Community, the first multi-county region to receive the designation. A total of nine organizations have received the certification, which recognizes preparedness for industrial development and investment, in the three years since TVA started the program.
“We’ve got a limited amount of resources and we don’t want to recruit companies that don’t move the needle a little bit,” Higgins said.
Camgian Microsystems, a defense software company in Mississippi State University’s Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park, aims to create 40 to 50 “well-paid” engineering jobs, according to Higgins’ presentation, and might expand due to the need for more space.
Creating that many six-figure jobs in a city as small as Starkville is definitely “going to move the needle,” Higgins said.
“They’re not asking us for money,” he said. “They’re asking us for help and influence, and we’re doing that.”
An automotive company expanding into the aerospace industry is looking at multiple potential locations in the Golden Triangle, including North Star and the Lowndes County Port, Higgins said. The company would invest between $40 million and $50 million and create 150 to 200 new jobs with an average pay of $43,000 per year.
A plumbing device manufacturing company is considering both North Star and the former home of the Flexsteel furniture manufacturing facility, which closed over the summer, on Industrial Park Road, Higgins said. It would create 220 jobs with a $40 million capital investment. Higgins did not say how much those jobs would pay.
Additionally, five companies in the solar power industry — which Higgins said is “just nuts right now” due to high demand — are looking at potential sites in the Golden Triangle, including one in Oktibbeha County north of Starkville.
The LINK put 2,000 acres each in Oktibbeha and Clay counties under option, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, after having virtual meetings with the school districts and the boards of supervisors in both counties, Higgins said.
“These are not a lot of jobs, but they’re a cash cow as far as tax revenue (for the county),” Higgins said. “You’re not putting any money in the projects, and there’s a lot of money invested.”
Higgins pointed to Clay County and West Point as the region’s best example of an economic development collaboration that benefits both entities. The city and county have an interlocal agreement in which they equally share cost, debt obligation and revenue on projects such as the Yokohama Tire Corporation plant, which is outside the West Point city limits, and the Peco Foods plant inside the city.
Spruill told The Dispatch an agreement like that with Oktibbeha County is “certainly something worth exploring.”
“I’m always interested in working out projects that benefit both the county and the city,” she said. “We are tied together much like we are tied to MSU.”
North Star update
The new home of Garan Manufacturing, North Star’s first confirmed tenant, will be complete by February 2021. Garan is relocating to the industrial park from its longtime location at the corner of Highway 12 and Industrial Park Road in Starkville.
The construction of a 50,000 square-foot “speculative building,” or an empty building with the goal of attracting a new business to an existing structure, near the entrance of North Star will start in 2021 at the request of Agracel, the Illinois-based property development company that partnered with the LINK to build it.
The pad, or plot of land prepared for building, for the structure was initially supposed to be built by the end of the summer but was delayed due to the pandemic. Higgins said the LINK will start advertising for bids for the spec building pad in the spring “as soon as the weather is ready.”
The land next to the spec building and directly across the street from Garan will have a 100,000-square-foot pad, initially funded partly by a $275,000 grant from TVA. Construction was supposed to start in August, but Higgins said Friday that the project is on hold because the grant is partly funding a 500,000-gallon water tank near the park’s entrance instead. Indiana-based Phoenix Fabricators and Erectors started building the tank in August.
Higgins told city and county leaders in January that a $1 billion development was hoping to establish itself in all three Golden Triangle counties and had its eye on the entire west end of North Star as its Oktibbeha County location. The project, codenamed Project Trinity, would create 100 to 150 technical jobs for six-figure wages.
Another planned occupant, Project Royal, would create 200 jobs in the textiles and advanced manufacturing industry for an average wage of $35,000, though Higgins said in January that he would prefer the wages be higher.
So far 230 acres of the 360 at North Star have potential or confirmed occupants, and Spruill said the park is achieving its goal of drawing new business and industry to Starkville.
“And certainly I’m always excited that we have businesses in town that want to expand or remain in town,” Spruill said. “That tells me we’re doing some things right, if they want to stay.”
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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