Audio clip
Jon Milstead
A Chattanooga group’s fact-finding mission to BMW country in South Carolina next week will focus on the city’s future after the arrival of Volkswagen, officials said Friday.
“It’s going to be a very different community in five years and then in 10 years,” said Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield, who will join seven or eight others on the trip to the Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., area Monday and Tuesday.
Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey, who also is going, said economic development opportunities brought by VW’s $1 billion plant at Enterprise South will mean change for the Chattanooga-Hamilton County area.
“We want to get an idea from folks who experienced things about what to look for — the mistakes we might learn from them and the successes,” he said.
FAST FACT
German automaker BMW is building a $750 million expansion to its South Carolina plant that will push employment there to almost 6,000.
Volkswagen plans to hire 2,000 workers for the Chattanooga plant, which is scheduled to open by early 2011. In addition, suppliers to the assembly facility also could hire that many employees in the region, officials have said.
The BMW plant that opened in 1994 employs more than 5,400 at the South Carolina site. Recently, the German automaker announced a $750 million expansion and 500 new jobs.
Officials from Tupelo, Miss., which last year landed a Toyota plant, made a similar visit to South Carolina earlier this year.
Jon Milstead, director of planning for Tupelo’s Community Development Foundation, said the city’s group wanted to see how BMW affected the economy and culture. He said the Greenville-Spartanburg area created an economic development climate proactive in taking steps that “propelled the area to do bigger and better things.”
“You could go to just about any grocery store and hear people speaking German or French,” Mr. Milstead said.
Tom Edd Wilson, the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce’s chief executive, said he is looking forward to comparing notes with the South Carolina leaders who also attracted a German carmaker.
“We can learn a great deal from them about how to manage this process as effectively as possible,” he said.
Others taking the trip include Mr. Wilson and Chamber Vice Presidents Trevor Hamilton, Hayes Ledford and J.Ed. Marston. Also, Times Free Press Publisher and Executive Editor Tom Griscom is going in his role as Chamber chairman.
Mr. Littlefield said Chattanooga officials know they will have to provide job training, assimilate people from different cultures, set up special educational classes and take other steps to prepare for VW.
The mayor said he is interested in what BMW’s arrival did to both commercial and residential land development in South Carolina.
“It generates new money in the economy,” Mr. Littlefield said. “We think there are lessons to be learned there.”
He said he also plans to visit Vance, Ala., where Daimler AG built a Mercedes assembly plant that started production in January 1997 and now employs more than 4,000 people.
Mike Pare, the deputy Business editor at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, has worked at the paper for 27 years. In addition to editing, Mike also writes Business stories and covers Volkswagen, economic development and manufacturing in Chattanooga and the surrounding area. In the past he also has covered higher education. Mike, a native of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., received a bachelor’s degree in communications from Florida Atlantic University. he worked at the Rome News-Tribune before ...
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