Rejected auto site fishes for $72M

Cost for next try set in Tennessee

JACKSON, Tenn. — Tennessee economic development officials want the state to pour another $72 million into a sprawling site that failed to land a new auto plant planned by a joint venture of Toyota and Mazda.

The Jackson Sun reports that the Memphis Regional Megasite has already received about $144 million in state funding. But Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bob Rolfe says the extra money is needed for wastewater, electrical, gas, water and railroad improvements to make the site spanning nearly 6.5 square miles ready for prospective investors.

Rolfe says those updates would make the site located about 50 miles east of downtown Memphis “shovel ready.” It was that lack of finishing touches that led to the Toyota-Mazda decision to build its plant elsewhere. The $1.6 billion facility is projected to create up to 4,000 jobs and have an annual production capacity of about 3,000 vehicles.

“We’ve got to work as one unit to make this thing happen,” said Haywood County Mayor Franklin

Smith. “West Tennessee is a great place, but we have to sell ourselves as one unit to whoever comes. It’s got to be local governments, state government — and not just local government Haywood County but local government all over west Tennessee.”

While western Tennessee is working to complete its site, an effort to create another megasite in north Tennessee is drawing some opposition.

The Leaf-Chronicle of

Clarksville reports that residents near the proposed site straddling Montgomery and Robertson counties are collecting signatures in opposition to the development.

Debra Moore, who said she lives “almost next-door” to the site located about a mile south of the Kentucky line, said residents are worried about the potential changes a major industrial development would have.

“The people out there are concerned about the impact on the farmland, which is some of the best farmland in our county, as well as the additional debt that [Montgomery]