While the Golden Triangle Development LINK is still working on its recently proposed fifth megasite project, Cinco – the fourth such site in Lowndes County – it is already looking at more areas for economic growth.
CEO Joe Max Higgins made confident remarks regarding the future of economic development in the Golden Triangle during the LINK’s 20th anniversary celebration Thursday at East Mississippi Community College’s Communiversity. The LINK’s next move? To work with Clay County to secure between 400 and 700 acres near the Yokohama Tire Plant for future companies to locate.
“We have got a policy here of winning and getting deals done,” Higgins said. “… We want to go on a land buy with Clay County here coming up. We’ll secure as much as the supervisors give us money for. We don’t have a project in mind, but that will be so we can run the water and sewer lines and build a road.”
Higgins also told those in attendance that the LINK has closed on a deal to bring two separate companies to Lowndes County near the Golden Triangle Regional Airport and will officially announce them later this fall.
Higgins added the LINK could also soon secure a purchase agreement with a company looking to locate in a speculative building at the NorthStar Industrial Park in Starkville.
“That spec building might be gone soon,” Higgins said. “We are cautiously optimistic (about the project).”
Two decades of LINK success
Since 2003, the LINK has helped to create three megasites in Lowndes County and one in Clay County, generated more than $10 billion in private investment and created more than 10,000 jobs.
The LINK was founded as the Columbus-Lowndes Economic Development Association in 1987 and rebranded shortly after Higgins arrived in Columbus in 2003. At the time, the organization had just closed on a deal for American Eurocopter (now Airbus) to locate its helicopter manufacturing facility next to GTRA, former LINK Vice President of Economic Development Brenda Lathan said.
After Higgins arrived, the LINK quickly pivoted its strategies to focus on the then-new megasite program, operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
A megasite is a large swath of land, usually more than 1,000 acres, dedicated to industrial developments for several companies to build and operate.
Shortly after, the LINK secured Severstal, a Russia-based steel company, to locate its steel mill in the Lowndes County Megasite in 2004. Steel Dynamics purchased the mill in 2015.
The LINK located Paccar, an engine manufacturing plant, at the Crossroads Megasite in 2010.
Over the next 10 years, The LINK would attract Oktibbeha and Clay counties to join as clients asking the LINK to recruit new industries. In 2015, Higgins and his team located the Yokohama Tire Plant in West Point and began developing the NorthStar Industrial Park in 2017, which is now home to Garan Manufacturing and a speculative building.
The LINK is also still working to support The $2.5 billion Aluminum Dynamics project, which is building a 2,100-acre aluminum mill on Charleigh D. Ford Jr. Drive and a biocarbon facility on Artesia Road that announced in 2022 they were coming to Lowndes County.
“Looking back, we’ve done a lot,” Higgins said. “If you’re in Atlanta, $10 billion in 20 years is not that significant, and it’s not that significant in Nashville. But when you add up these three counties and get 130,000 people solid, those are some pretty astronomical numbers.”
Jerry Toney, chairman for the LINK Executive Committee, said the LINK has been a key instrument for economic development in the Golden Triangle. He believes it will continue to be so in years to come.
“This is an incredibly exciting time to be a part of this organization,” Toney said. “The recent successes we have seen in the Golden Triangle are the culmination of years of strategic investment in economic development, and the growth we are seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come, which not only impacts the Golden Triangle but our entire region.”
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