How Clarksville, Tenn., landed the 600-job LG plant
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - With the announcement that LG Electronics is coming to Corporate Business Park North with a $250 million plant and 600 jobs, the local industrial park is now book-ended by South Korean companies.
To the south along International Boulevard near Interstate 24 Exit 8, Hankook Tire is also preparing to begin manufacturing in an $800 million facility and provide 1,000 jobs by the end of this year.
Local business recruiters including Mike Evans, executive director of the Industrial Development Board, and Cal Wray, executive director of the Economic Development Council, see this as the beginning of a business relationship with South Korea that will yield limitless benefits.
The community largely has Fort Campbell to thank for this. It has made Clarksville-Montgomery County one of the most diverse melting pots on the Southeastern map.
The fact that Korean families are growing more comfortable living in this community, Evans said, speaks well of Clarksville and its people ... and future business prospects.
LG Electronics is taking over a 310acre site near Clarksville in Montgomery County and plans to open sometime in 2019.
It’s a vast corporation headquartered in Yeouido-doug, Seoul, South Korea, that, at least initially, will manufacture washing machines here.
“As we understand it now, a lot of the components of washers and dryers will be supplied to this plant,” Evans said. “It will be closer to being an assembly plant, which will additionally give us a chance in the future to attract more suppliers for this facility.”
The LG site near Clarksville is part of the 1,167 acres that make up Corporate Business Park North. The tract is south of Tylertown Road and east of Jim Johnson Road.
State officials put Montgomery County in the mix for the LG plant because of the available property, formerly occupied by Hemlock Semiconductor, whose production never materialized even after the facility was fully built out and ready to start.
State and local incentives are involved but not yet specified in detail. Evans and Wray said there are features of the incentives packages that are still being finalized.
LG secretly came on the radar in the spring of 2016. “That’s when it really came alive for Clarksville-Montgomery County,” Evans said. “They had looked at several Tennessee locations and narrowed it down to us and the megasite in West Tennessee, northwest of Jackson.”
By December 2016, the site selection process had essentially eliminated the West Tennessee site, Evans said, and Clarksville found itself competing as one of two finalists with another undisclosed site, in another state.
“We would rather stay aligned with the company at this time and not disclose who that other finalist was,” Evans said.
Over time, LG scouts had conducted about four site visits in Montgomery County, the last one being in January, by the company’s CEO.
Wray recalled that Montgomery County rolled out the red carpet for an on-site event at Corporate Business Park North, and residents driving by the park on that January day were growing increasingly curious about it.
“I think that’s when we knew it was getting to be really serious,” Wray said. More discussions resulted in the IDB agreeing to increase the size of the tract from 202, to 310 acres.
That was Jan. 9. More discussion and negotiation persisted throughout the first month of the year.
Early last month, the state Department of Economic and Community Development was contacted by LG about the Montgomery County site.
“They asked for us to prepare our final, and best offer to them,” Evans said.
He, and Allen Borden and Victoria Hirschberg from the state ECD decided to fly to Seoul to make that final presentation to LG in person.
As late as last week, Evans and the state ECD were back in the air, this time headed to LG’s North American headquarters in New Jersey, to put the terms of the deal in writing.
It was there that the Feb. 28 announcement on Capitol Hill in Nashville was planned.
Evans said County Mayor Jim Durrett was heavily engaged throughout the negotiation process in many of the “quick decisions” that had to be made behind the scenes.