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Could Volkswagen be in Chattanooga's Future?


Hankster

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This is terrific news! I read read early this morning that someone with inside info had informed certian folks adn media outlets that Chattanooga was going to be the site selected by VW. This is terrific news for TN and although I know I sound like a broken record I have to say yet again that this just goes to show how competative and attractive Tennessee continues to be in terms of attracting business and residents. We all should be very proud of how our state and of our leadership on all levels who made this happen.

Congrats to Chattanooga. This was well-derserved victory after years of fighting for what you all new you could win and reflects very well on the city/region.

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Congratulations to Chattanooga for your economic win in a fierce competition. I know that Chattanooga deserved the plant just as much or maybe even more than the Huntsville area did. We'll be back again fighting for another plant (maybe Audi). I know you are proud of your leadership for helping deliver you such a nice project.

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Huntsville may get the second place prize, Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of engine or parts plant that would go to the other location? Also since the two are relatively close together, they'd both benefit anyway. There really needs to be a more direct link from Chatt to Huntsville anyway.

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So how did Stephen Jacoby the CEO of VW America just show up at the press conference. Well some fun backtracking shows a

Beechcraft Super King left Dulles (next door to VW HQ) this morning at 7:24 and arrived at Lovell field at 9:17. Plenty of time to get to the press conference. Wonder who picked him up? The governor probably, so someone at the airport had a good idea something was up.

According to reports the Governor knew last Friday that the Chatt. site had been chosen.

The plane is scheduled to head back this afternoon.

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Has anyone heard if this plant was the "Project Pinetree" search. I've seen no mention of it.

I think it may have been called Polar Bear.

From reading reports I think Chattanooga had this thing won at least a month ago. It appears they

may have played Huntsville a bit to get Chattanooga to add more to the pot. But hey that's the way the game is played

and Chattanooga played it very well.

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Huntsville may get the second place prize, Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of engine or parts plant that would go to the other location? Also since the two are relatively close together, they'd both benefit anyway. There really needs to be a more direct link from Chatt to Huntsville anyway.

I never read or heard of any announcement concerning engine or drive train manufacturing. Did anyone hear anything about that?

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One news source I read quoted someone as saying that was never the case. I think I read it this morning in the Times Free Press.

It really seems as though there was a coordinated misinformation campaign, and southernautocorridor.com ran with it.

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Huntsville may get the second place prize, Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of engine or parts plant that would go to the other location? Also since the two are relatively close together, they'd both benefit anyway. There really needs to be a more direct link from Chatt to Huntsville anyway.

It turns out the engine plant is going to Mexico. So much for the high-paying supplier jobs.

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I decided to take a look at how far it is from Enterprise South to various communities around the region. Using a driving directions website I took the address of Northern Tool which is located right beside the interstate at the Bonny Oaks interchange just a couple of miles south of Enterprise South as the origin. Each community was typed in as the community and the mapping software did a driving miles listing to the center of town. I understand most industrial areas are not in the center of town, but this gives us an idea of distance and I can only do so much on a shoestring budget.

Tennessee communities:

Soddy Daisy --- 19 miles

Cleveland --- 20 miles

Charleston / Calhoun --- 30 miles

Benton --- 33 miles

Whitwell --- 37 miles

Jasper --- 38 miles

Dayton --- 39 miles

Dunlap --- 42 miles

South Pittsburg --- 42 miles

Athens --- 46 miles

Etowah --- 48 miles

Decatur --- 51 miles

Spring City --- 55 miles

Pikeville --- 58 miles

Georgia communities:

Ft Oglethorpe --- 15 miles

Ringgold --- 16 miles

Chickamauga --- 21 miles

Varnell --- 26 miles

Dalton --- 31 miles

Trenton --- 33 miles

La Fayette --- 36 miles

Chatsworth --- 42 miles

Calhoun --- 48 miles

Summerville --- 49 miles

Alabama communities:

Bridgeport --- 47 miles

Stevenson --- 57 miles

Ft Payne --- 66 miles

Scottsboro --- 76 miles

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One news source I read quoted someone as saying that was never the case. I think I read it this morning in the Times Free Press.

It really seems as though there was a coordinated misinformation campaign, and southernautocorridor.com ran with it.

Isn't that the truth. I'd have to say that southernautocorrider.com and sb-d.com (southern business development) both lost a lot of credibility with all their misinformation.

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It turns out the engine plant is going to Mexico. So much for the high-paying supplier jobs.

What is your source for that information? It seems odd that VW would do that in these days of lean manufacturing and just in time delivery. By the way, welcome to the forum.

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I googled VW building an engine plant and found this article from yesterday from Bloomberg news:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=abtsJmYB7wK4

There's a lot of good information in the article. Regarding the engine plant was this statement:

"Construction of an engine plant in North America, probably in Mexico, also is under study, Stefan Jacoby, chief executive officer of Volkswagen Group of America Inc., said yesterday in an interview."

If the statement as reported in the article is directly from Jacoby, head of VW North America, then I guess the plant will most likely go to Mexico. I hope Enterprise South continues to campaign hard for this plant as well. There is certainly enough land at Enterprise South to support both plants.

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I googled VW building an engine plant and found this article from yesterday from Bloomberg news:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=abtsJmYB7wK4

There's a lot of good information in the article. Regarding the engine plant was this statement:

"Construction of an engine plant in North America, probably in Mexico, also is under study, Stefan Jacoby, chief executive officer of Volkswagen Group of America Inc., said yesterday in an interview."

If the statement as reported in the article is directly from Jacoby, head of VW North America, then I guess the plant will most likely go to Mexico. I hope Enterprise South continues to campaign hard for this plant as well. There is certainly enough land at Enterprise South to support both plants.

I don't have the link, but the Chattanooga paper reported (deep in the article and after the announcement) that the current plant in Puebla, which makes Jettas, would make the engines for the Chattanooga plant. If VW start assembling a sub-compact, it might have to build another plant in Mexico. I'm a little worried that Alabama and Tennessee both got too caught up in the bidding. I hope I'm wrong.

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What is your source for that information? It seems odd that VW would do that in these days of lean manufacturing and just in time delivery. By the way, welcome to the forum.

I just saw your welcoming post. Thanks. I've been following the thread for awhile from Decatur, Ala.

The two relevant links I'm finding immediately are below. I printed out a more direct statement from the Times Free Press, but left it at work and can't find the link.

Lean manufacturing and delivery schedules are important cost-saving techniques, but it's hard to beat cutting your labor costs by two-thirds.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...p;refer=germany

http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_131564.asp

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I googled VW building an engine plant and found this article from yesterday from Bloomberg news:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=abtsJmYB7wK4

There's a lot of good information in the article. Regarding the engine plant was this statement:

"Construction of an engine plant in North America, probably in Mexico, also is under study, Stefan Jacoby, chief executive officer of Volkswagen Group of America Inc., said yesterday in an interview."

If the statement as reported in the article is directly from Jacoby, head of VW North America, then I guess the plant will most likely go to Mexico. I hope Enterprise South continues to campaign hard for this plant as well. There is certainly enough land at Enterprise South to support both plants.

OK, here it is: "The engines, for instance, will not be built here

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Any word as to how many new people this will bring to the Chattanooga area? Currently the city is close to 170k with a metro (excluding Cleveland and Dalton) of about 500k. Any thoughts as to how many would be added due to this over the years?

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Any word as to how many new people this will bring to the Chattanooga area? Currently the city is close to 170k with a metro (excluding Cleveland and Dalton) of about 500k. Any thoughts as to how many would be added due to this over the years?

I talked to an automotive industry person who said as many as 10 per assembly plant employee, so 20,000 total. Of course some would end up at suppliers as much as an hour away.

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I don't have the link, but the Chattanooga paper reported (deep in the article and after the announcement) that the current plant in Puebla, which makes Jettas, would make the engines for the Chattanooga plant. If VW start assembling a sub-compact, it might have to build another plant in Mexico. I'm a little worried that Alabama and Tennessee both got too caught up in the bidding. I hope I'm wrong.

This is interesting and in no way diminishes the great win for Chattanooga but a few odd things about this.

1.Gov. Bob Riley says the price for Alabama to land the Volkswagen assembly plant proved too steep.

The governor says the competition with Tennessee reached the point where Alabama didn't want to keep raising the offer.

Alabama offered a package that included $205 million in cash, plus another $181 million in tax breaks, job training and other considerations.

Riley said it was the most the state ever offered for an auto plant. (Something made Alabama uncomfortable about the deal. I think they realized they had no chance of winning

and they were being used. Some of that is expected but it became too obvious.)

2. VW perferrred the second site in HSV over the TVA megasite on I-65 which had already had environmental, some prep work and other requirements

to qualify as an auto plant ready site.This surprised Alabama officials and they really had to scramble. VW picked a site that had not had any of this work done, which put AL at a disadvantage. Why would they do this?

Since TVA would be involved with both,they wanted TVA to promote the Enterprise site which they did.TVA couldn't promote both equally.

3. How long in advance did TN know they won? From reports it could have been at least a month. So did VW manipulate the two states against each other? Yes

4. And of course all the misinformation reported here but especially out of Europe. How is that possible unless it was intentional. To get more out of TN. Just let it

"slip" which site appears to win and watch the bids go up.

5. A wishful thinking approach.. VW was scouting two sites all along, they picked Enterprise for themselves and recommended Huntsville for Audi which would sort of explain the

"wrong" media reports. Especially if the two sites were so difficult to pick a winner as they stated. Why would Audi need to look anywhere else, plus now they know basically what kind of deal they will get.

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