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Toyota Plant - Marion or Chattanooga?


tnse

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They are both great locations. To me, neither one of them really overshadow the other because the both have so much to offer. I would really like the marion location to be the final spot because I am biased, but I would not be surprised if the chattanooga location is picked. They are just to similar in what they offer.

It is really going to come down to how hard the city and state leaders push for their site. The location with the best group representing it will get it now and I hope that marion and arkansas's experience in the past couple of years will benefit them.

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Here's what Chattanooga has to offer. I think you'll all agree that it's quite impressive. There's much more info on the link below.

Enterprise South

Enterprise South is a top-tier industrial park that offers significant strategic business advantages. Being at Enterprise South gives your company access to powerful technology and research assets, a skilled labor pool, and a first-rate quality of life coupled with an affordable cost of living:

Top 10 Site Features

1,600-acre developable acres surrounded by a 2,800-acre buffer to the east and 128-acre buffer to the west. When complete, Enterprise South will include 3,000 developable acres while retaining both buffers.

Mega Site Certified by McCallum Sweeney

Location: 12 miles northeast of downtown Chattanooga

Zoned: Heavy Manufacturing

Multi-modal Transportation

Interstate

I-75 adjacent to site (dedicated interchange under construction)

I-24 - 7 miles from site

I-59 - 25 miles from site

Air Service

Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport - 4.5 miles from site

Dual Rail Capacity

CSX

Norfolk Southern

Proximity to Major Commercial Centers and Markets

80% of the U.S. population is within a two-day drive.

Location in the SE Growth Corridor:

Atlanta, GA: 120 miles

Knoxville, TN: 100 miles

Nashville, TN: 130 miles

Birmingham, AL: 150 miles

Industrial-grade Infrastructure

Water - 30 MGD

Electricity - 161kV to 12kV

Sewers - 720,000 gpd

Natural Gas - 250,000 CFH

Highly Skilled Workforce

Labor pool: 1 million people

Strong regional manufacturing expertise and trades

Chattanooga State Technical Community College provides customized state training programs.

TVA employs 3000+ engineers

UTC SimCenter offers a Ph.D. in Computational Simulation

Proximity to Major National Research and Technology Centers

Supercomputer access - direct connection between University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Supercomputing Center available to approved industry users

Four national R&D centers within 100 miles for cooperative work with industry:

University of Tennessee SimCenter at Chattanooga (Chattanooga, TN): 6 miles

Oak Ridge National Labortories (Oak Ridge, TN): 109 miles

NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, AL): 100 miles

Redstone Army Arsenal (Huntsville, AL): 100 miles

Arnold Engineer Development Corp. (Tullahoma, TN): 80 miles

Owned by City and County

Property under 100% control & ownership

Strong State and Federal Support

The first Certified Automotive Megasite in Tennessee

State and federal financial support

Active federal participation and support in development by:

Congressman Zach Wamp

Senator Bill Frist

Senator Lamar Alexander

Active State Support

Governor Phil Bredesen

Commissioner Matt Kisber - Department of Economic and Community Development

Commissioner Gerald Nicely - Department of Transportation

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Both sites have their pluses and minuses. The Chattanooga site is considerably closer to more Toyota parts suppliers than is Marion. Both offer outstanding transportation opportunities. The Chattanooga site has both CSX and Norfolk Southern railroad lines crisscrossing on the 1,600 acre site. Both lines feed into the Chattanooga railroad hub, one of the busier railroads hubs in the nation with rail lines in most any direction. When it's all said and done, the winner will be the site Toyota thinks will provide the best site with the overall lowest costs, and with the best quality labor pool. The overall education level of the workforce and the availability of training will play a major role, in my opinion. One factor that worries me is the workman compensation cost issue. Tennesse's workman's comp costs are higher than those in Arkansas. Whichever site wins, I congratulate the winner. The good news is that reports are that Toyota plans to open at least 4 more plants after this one by 2016. Word is they will begin searching for a new plant location as soon as they choose this one. Maybe both sites will eventually have Toyota plants on them.

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What's so funny here? That fact that the entire Tennessee congressional delegation is solidly backing Chattanooga is of high importance, in my opinion. On top of that, Alabama and Georgia also also lobbying in Chattanooga's favor. All Arkansas will be able to muster up on their behalf, is possibly one or two West Tennessee congressman plus the relatively small Arkansas congressional delegation. The fact that the recently elected Senator from Tennessee, Bob Corker is the former mayor of Chattanooga, doesn't hurt either.
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They haven't picked Marion incorrectly, yet. The article has this excerpt from their 2OO2 prediction:

"Where will Toyota locate its next assembly plant in the Southern Auto Corridor? It's going to be San Antonio ... and Marion, Ark. San Antonio will be picked first and Marion within two to four years."

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FYI - Seems Memhis will not support Marion's efforts to get a Toyota plant. They support Chattanooga instead - to the immediate deteriment of Memphis. While I understand the reason, I think it is a mistake in a lot of ways. A Toyota plant would be great economically for Memphis. What things could TN as a state do to hurt Memphis if they support Marion over Chattanooga? Is the TN goverenment slated to help Memphis in any way on some upcoming projects? I don't think they helped build FedExForum like they did Titan's stadium did they? Would they help fund light rail in Memphis like they have commuter rail in Nashville? I'm wondering because I'm not sure what the TN state gov has said they would help in Memphis. Discussion points anyone?

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/busine...5319400,00.html

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Bredesen has nashville and east tennessee in his best interest. He will do whatever it takes to make sure that we don't screw up anything that could potentially help out those areas. It is a lose-lose battle for us. If we support marion, he will cut our funding, which he is already trying to do right not. If we support chattanooga, memphis will not benefit from any of the money that is generated. As bad as the fords were, they were the reasons we got project done in memphis. They would take bribes or whatever, but they would fight till the last stance for money to distributed to memphis. Now we have no decent representation up in nashville except for Mark Norris of collierville.

All of this is evident in the fact that SR 385 is not completed right now. The funds that were supposed to be used to finish the project a couple of years ago were pulled because bredesen wanted to focus he attention on the interstates up in nashville.

As long as their is a governor from nashville in power, we will continuously get screwed. I know first hand because I live up their and they have some deep down hatred for memphis.

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FYI - Seems Memhis will not support Marion's efforts to get a Toyota plant. They support Chattanooga instead - to the immediate deteriment of Memphis. While I understand the reason, I think it is a mistake in a lot of ways. A Toyota plant would be great economically for Memphis. What things could TN as a state do to hurt Memphis if they support Marion over Chattanooga? Is the TN goverenment slated to help Memphis in any way on some upcoming projects? I don't think they helped build FedExForum like they did Titan's stadium did they? Would they help fund light rail in Memphis like they have commuter rail in Nashville? I'm wondering because I'm not sure what the TN state gov has said they would help in Memphis. Discussion points anyone?

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/busine...5319400,00.html

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Nashville will always support Middle Tenn and East Tn w/o giving a second glance to the impact it would have on Memphis. I agree with G-Town, I used to live in Nashville too and there is extreme animosity up there against us. I wish we could just cut ties with the rest of the state somehow. We should definitely be supporting Marion and not Chattanooga, it's a shame this state is so messed up!

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I will say that I do see the reasons why they are making memphis leaders stay quite. This will generate tons of money state wide that the marion site will not. I realize that the extra money will hopefully go into programs that will make tennessee better; it could increase the wages of our teachers, help our health plan, and create a better incentive plan to bring in major companies, among other programs. My only problem is I don't want to see this extra money generated to go straight to middle and east tennessee. Bredesen is very pro nashville, he was mayor there, and he is one of the main reasons they have become a progressive city. With this favoritism towards nashville, I think he is more willing to give financial incentives to a major corporation looking at nashville over one looking at memphis. I am not sure the state had anything to do with luring IP or Service Master to memphis. They both already had major presence in the city, so it made sense to locate the main offices their. Does this seem like it is the case or am I wrong? I could be wrong about IP, they packed up their belongings in new york and parked here in Memphis, so maybe there was a good incentive deal.

Above all, the state is doing what is in its best interest and chattanooga is in its best interest. I am not sure how this will affect the marion site. Do you think this will be a major factor in who gets the plant given the fact that toyoto sees a major city right next to their potential site that is not assisting at all? Or do you think toyoto will see the big picture and come to the conclusion that memphis has come to a fork in the road and cannot decide which way to go?

In the end I will be in favor of the site that benefits the city the most even if it is indirectly through chattanooga.

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You guys have made some good points above, and between this topic and the article in the CA, I'm veeeeery irritated at the rest of the state right now.

I think this whole issue is symptomatic of the value we as Americans place on state lines. State lines mean everything to some people, but when a region is inclusive of more than one state, things like this can happen. Memphis is much more closely tied and supported by Marion than Chattanooga. Big deal if there's a hypothetical state line between us. We are one and the same and we should be allowed to support ourselves in this issue.

I think Bredesen and the rest of Middle and East Tennessee simply do not understand the dynamics involved, and I also suspect, as Idlewild pointed out, there's some very old rivalry involved here. Bredesen and the rest of Tennessee would gladly pour water on a drowning Memphis.

This highlights the necessity of having some form of regional government that crosses state line. I'm reading "Urban Economics and Land Use in America" right now by Alan Rabinowitz, and he's advocating for a type of regional legislature, where counties in an MSA would elect representatives. I think that's an excellent idea, especially since the 8-county Memphis MSA could feasibly stand up to the rest of Tennessee, while the 3-county portion in Tennessee can't.

Augh. Politics.

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