VERY GOOD news for West Tennessee

[Rural King]

The Jackson Sun is reporting today that hand grenade production will be added to the Milan Arsenal Amunition Plant's production in the coming 2 to 6 years. The plant currently employs 550 individuals, and the addition of the grenade lines may double employment in the plant, or in other words increase employment UP TO 900-1000 jobs. The shifting of production is a result of plant closures under the BRAC process, which Milan survived and is now benefiting from.

IF the Milan Arsenal gained upwards of 500 union jobs it would be a huge boost to the City of Milan, Gibson Co., and NW TN in particular. The area has seen major job loses of the last decade, and Gibson County has an unemployment rate of around 7% currently, which is posed to go higher with two plants slated to close this year- one in Humboldt (NCR - 90 jobs) and one in Milan (Tower Automotive - 250ish). So the news come in at a good time for Gibson County who has needed some good news.

Jackson Sun Article:

http://www.jacksonsun.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar.../603050316/1002

[Bears]

How far is Milan from Jackson? I would imagine in a few years, Milan will be a suburb of Jackson if not already.

[Hankster]

That is wonderful news for the area. I would imagine about 500 people could manufacture a huge number of hand grenades. Milan is about 20 miles north of Jackson. I would imagine that it is starting to get built up along much of the rad linking the two cities. Is that the case, RK?

[Rural King]

^ Milan is 25 miles away from Jackson (downtown to downtown), it has a completely different identity from Jackson and is not going to become a suburb anytime soon, now Jackson and Humboldt seem to on a path in the coming decades to become much closer together in their relationship.

Medina which lies between Milan and Jackson on the Gibson/Madison County line, IS WELL on its way though to becoming a suburb/bedroom community. Lots of subdivisions going up in Medina to serve folks who work in Jackson.

[Kyle]

I can tell you all about Milan, as for 13/15 years of life, it has been my hometown.

As RK said, it is 25 miles north of Jackson, and it has around 7,800 people. It built a new middle school a few years ago and an elementary school about a half mile from each other on the north side of town, and cheapo sprawl is messing up countryside near the middle school. The school system is OKAY, but not as good as they make it out to be.

It has a couple of RR's running through it, and has been trying to get their hands on as much sprawl as they possibly can. They have let their DT waste away to the point where they have torn down multi story buildings in place of PARKING LOTS for the churches DT. As for the DT itself, it's crumbling, but if there is a good movie at the theater it can be crowded. The state of employment is not good here as RK stated. In the 90's, they had the motto, "Where America Comes to Work", since then, many of the factories have closed/cutback on employment.

Neighborhoods in general are that the west side is the hood, north side is generally middle class, but it too is slowly becoming the hood, east side of town is middle class, but has some money in it. South side (on the way to Jackson) is where all the money is.

Milan is sprawling south and is trying to tap into Medina's growth, as they have multiple subdivisions currently under construction/completed, but for the most part, is still countryside. It just opened that new Supercenter just over a month ago, and they really do not have much incentive about reviving their DT, at least IMHO.