Small towns brace for change, prosperity with Ford’s arrival
STANTON, Tenn. — Lesa Tard expects to serve up more hot wings and cheeseburgers when the clean energy revolution comes to Stanton with Ford’s plans to build a factory to produce electric pickups. So she’s making plans to expand along with the tiny West Tennessee town.
Her diner is strategically situated at the busiest intersection in the community of about 450, and she’s looking forward to serving the thousands of workers who will arrive once construction begins and a sprawling vehicle and battery manufacturing complex opens.
“I don’t see anything but great things happening,” said Tard, who operates Suga’s Diner with her husband. “It will be good for the area because people, once they start coming down here to work, some people might want to relocate, and the community can grow.”
Stanton is one of two small Southern towns likely to undergo dramatic transformations in the wake of Monday’s announcement by Ford that it will put Stanton and Glendale, Ky., at the center of its plans to ramp up electric vehicle production.
Together with its battery partner, SK Innovation of South Korea, Ford says it will spend $5.6 billion in Stanton, where it will build a factory to produce electric F-Series pickup trucks. A joint venture called BlueOvalSK will construct a battery factory on the same site near Memphis, plus twin battery plants in Glendale in central Kentucky. Ford estimated the Kentucky investment at $5.8 billion. The projects will create an estimated 10,800 jobs and shift the automaker’s future manufacturing footprint toward the South.
Residents of both towns eye the changes with a mix of wary optimism and wistfulness, aware that a way of life they’ve grown accustomed to may be on the cusp of turning into something unrecognizable — but also prosperous. As Ford unveiled its plans Monday evening to build two battery manufacturing plants outside Glendale, residents were relishing the slower-paced rhythms of life in the tightknit Kentucky farming community ringed by corn and soybean fields. From front porches to the parking lot at a general store, they wondered if those days are numbered.
Residents sounded hopeful that the promise of 5,000 jobs will create more opportunities for young people to stick around. But they worried about problems that rapid growth can create.
“Yes, we need jobs,” Nikki Basham said. “Yes, it will help the economy. There are pros and cons. Glendale is a small town, you come to kind of get away. I guess we’ll see how it’s going to go.”
Basham, the mom of two young children, has lived in the Hardin County community of a few hundred for 17 years, since she was a teenager. She said it’s important for the hamlet to grow but she also likes the quiet lifestyle, with one main road leading in and out of town.