BALDWIN COUNTY, ALABAMA eDEVELOPMENTS

A Publication of the Baldwin County
Economic Development Alliance

Welcome to the Alliance eNewsletter
November 2006

The Directors, Officers and Staff of the Alliance
appreciate your support and are proud to provide
you with highlights of our 2006 efforts.

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Diversity is essential if we hope to protect ourselves from down cycles in the economy and from potential natural disasters.  The Mississippi Gulf Coast is a great example.  Hurricane Katrina destroyed their tourism revenue, with many establishments still closed 14 months later, but all manufacturing plants were up and running within weeks.  This allowed thousands of residents to maintain jobs and keep dollars flowing through businesses that were open.

Due to Baldwin County’s great quality of life and natural resources, retail, housing, tourism and population growth should always be strong if we plan properly, don’t have any major natural disasters, and the national economy stays out of recession.  But high paying manufacturing, technology and distribution job creation operates under a different set of parameters where quality of life is often secondary to other factors at the beginning of the site location process--with the bottom line being the key ingredient!

Factors such as labor quantity and quality, the availability of skilled labor, land/building availability and cost, proximity to customers, access to appropriate transportation systems, infrastructure availability and telecommunications capabilities normally are evaluated first.  Communities are then eliminated from the search before quality of life comes in to play.  It is often an impersonal process controlled by consultants and corporate real estate professionals who are located in large markets all over the world.

To gain access to the “players” in the site location game, economic development organizations must become “players” themselves: Be proactive, have a great website, participate in functions at which potential clients participate, and network, network, network.  We try hard to do all of the above.

In recent months we have gone to Europe with the Alabama Development Office (ADO) to begin the process of recruiting EADS suppliers, been to Washington with ADO to begin the process of recruiting Northrop Grumman suppliers, hosted a “Familiarization Tour” in which we brought key allies to Baldwin County to show them our industrial related assets, and traveled to Birmingham to help ADO host twenty two of the leading site location consultants in the United States at a four day event called “Sweet Home Alabama Weekend.”

To date this year we have worked with 17 new and expanding manufacturers, distributors, and high tech companies to create approximately 870 new jobs and over $50 million in capital investment.  We believe that at year-end our totals will rank us in the top 20 micropolitan counties in the United States for job and investment creation in the non-retail and non-service sectors.

The aviation manufacturing and MRO industries are developing into one of our hottest growth business sectors in Baldwin County and in our region. Consider: Goodrich Aerostructures recently announced an expansion that will add 160 jobs and a significant amount of work to their Foley operations. Stork Aviation’s Fokker Services division recently bought AIRINC, and L3 Communications recently acquired Crestview Aerospace, bringing two international top-tier major aviation companies to the Fairhope airport. Airbus has a new 125 person engineering center under construction at Brookley Field and a number of EADS CASA service training engineers are now located near the Mobile Regional Airport.                      

Raytheon and EADS CASA are bidding on a joint Army/Air Force proposal to supply the next generation Joint Cargo Aircraft. They are already supplying a version of this aircraft to the Coast Guard. If they are awarded the contract, the aircraft would be built at a new facility at the Mobile Regional Airport, creating several hundred jobs for Mobile and Baldwin residents.

Northrop Grumman has partnered with Airbus with a proposal to build the KC30 military tanker – and the Airbus A330 airliner that it is based on – in Mobile at Brookley Field. If they are awarded this contract, it may result in 1,000 direct jobs and several thousand supplier and indirect jobs in the region.

We continue to work hard at being good partners with our neighboring communities and the Governor’s office in growing this business sector. Baldwin County Commissioners Wayne Gruenloh and David Ed Bishop and Alliance Vice President Bob Higgins joined Governor Bob Riley, Mobile Mayor Sam Jones, Mobile County Commissioner Steve Nodine, and a number of people from the Mobile Chamber, the Mobile Airport Authority and the Alabama Development Office in a trip to Europe to be introduced by Airbus and EADS to some of its suppliers that may be interested in establishing plants in our area. Several of us were invited to tour current EADS and Airbus facilities in Seville and Madrid (Spain) and in Toulouse (France) to give us a better idea of what we may get here. There are only two other large aircraft assembly plants in the world – Seattle and Toulouse – we would be the third. We were shown buildings large enough for several A330 Airbus airliners to be under construction simultaneously – full of high tech equipment and hundreds of engineers, technicians, purchasing agents, quality managers and trainers – all of which would be part of a Mobile area operation.

Bottom line: This has the potential to dramatically change the region for the better. It was best said by the Deputy Mayor of Toulouse: “We knew that the new direct jobs at the Airbus factory would be good for our community. What we didn’t expect was the huge positive effect on our educational community, on retail stores and restaurants, and on our overall quality of life. That impact is even more important to our city than the plant itself.”
 

The Alliance has partnered with the Alabama Gulf Coast Chamber and the South Baldwin Chamber in establishing a “South Baldwin Technology Council” with a focus on information technology. The objectives are to provide a way for IT people in our area to be able to meet each other and hear speakers of interest to them.

The South Baldwin Tech Council meets once a quarter at Craft Farms. Speakers have included Jim Walker (Alabama’s Director of Homeland Security), Mike Dow (co-founder of QMS and former Mobile Mayor), Mike Miller (GulfTel) and Eric Daniels (Southern Light) on our fiber optic infrastructure, and Chris Dow (InfraGard) on computer security.

If you are interested in participating in future meetings, let either chamber know. More information is available at www.sbtech.org.
 

Over 20 business leaders and elected officials participated in the Eastern Shore Chamber’s 8^th annual leadership trip. This time the destination was Asheville, NC. Some of the learnings brought back from this trip: 

Ø       There is great value in co-locating many workforce development activities under one roof. The community college in Asheville had been donated 300,000 square feet of former industrial building space which they turned into a central location for some college classes, the Career One Stop center, a business incubator, SCORE, a Small Business Development Center, and the North Carolina versions of AIDT and ATN.

Ø       Affordable housing was an issue in Asheville as well. The mayor reported that the platform she ran on was based on making more affordable housing available, and that this is the single area on which she spends most of her time.

Ø       The Asheville Chamber found that building a new Class A chamber office building offered opportunities for many new revenue streams – conference room and office space rentals, sponsorships, retail sales of branded items – as well as giving new members a reason to join.
 

A survey done a couple of years ago by Faulkner State Community College counted 63 different groups within Baldwin County that were each involved in workforce development in one way or another. Some of these groups have excellent connections to our business community; others are part of larger organizations that may have priorities set somewhere else. At our request, the Governor’s Office of Workforce Development has awarded a contract to the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission (SARPC) to take a step toward aligning the performance goals of these groups with the needs of our businesses. Expect to see an employer’s advisory counsel formed over the next few months to work with us on this.
 

Ø       Goodrich Aerostructures is adding 60,000 sq ft and 160 jobs to its facilities at the Foley Airport.

Ø       ProCell is doubling the size of its plant in Foley with an addition of 40,000 sq ft, $8.5 million in capital investment and 15 jobs.

Ø       Glass Inc. is moving from a small location in Orange Beach to a new building on the Foley Beach Express. This will result in the addition of 110 new manufacturing and installation jobs.

Ø       Reynolds Concrete is consolidating its current two plants in Orange Beach and Foley into a new, larger location near the Foley Beach Express.

Ø       Swift Supply has announced a new truss manufacturing plant will be built next to ProCell in Foley. This will create 45 new jobs.

Ø       Baldwin EMC is moving its South Baldwin office from Gulf Shores to a much larger location in the new Orange Beach Commerce Park on the Foley Beach Express.

Ø       Rx Advantage has moved from Escambia County, FL to a new, much larger location in the Infirmary Building in Daphne.  This may bring up to 100 pharmaceutical jobs to our area.  Watch for an official ribbon cutting later this year.

Ø       Coastal Stone Works in Fairhope is expanding with plans for $847,000 in capital investment creating 22 new jobs in the next 3 years.
 

The Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance recently hired Lee Lawson as Director of Economic Development and Research. Mr. Lawson will coordinate project management, marketing, research functions and assist in recruitment of new industry to Baldwin County.

“Lee is an outstanding young economic development talent,” said Robert Ingram, President and CEO of the Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance. “He is exactly what the Alliance needs to help move Baldwin County to the next level. We are extremely lucky to be able to make him a part of our Baldwin County team!”

Envision Coastal Alabama is a volunteer organization whose mission is to facilitate cooperative action for a unified coastal region with a healthy environment, sustainable economic development, excellence in education and equity for all.  For the past 10 years, Mobile and Baldwin Counties have worked together to accomplish one of the most important tasks facing every community across the globe - creating regional linkages to facilitate the ability to compete with other regional economies in the world.  Ron Martin, Alabama Power Company, will serve as the Mobile County chairman and Phillip Norris, University of South Alabama Baldwin Campus, will serve as the Baldwin County chairman of Envision this year.

SEDC, the Southern Economic Development Council, is the professional development organization for seventeen (17) southern states.  It is the largest regional economic development organization in the United States with approximately 1000 members.

The Alliance and Baldwin County hold strong leadership positions within the organization as evidenced by activities which took place at the organization's Annual Meeting in Orlando in late October.  Lee Lawson of the Alliance was awarded one of only two scholarships presented at the meeting.  Lee's scholarship will pay for one year's tuition to the Economic Development Institute.

Robert Ingram was elected as SEDC's First Vice Chairman, and will assume the chairmanship in November of 2007 in Little Rock.  He will be Alabama's third chairman in the 60-year history of SEDC.  Ingram was also one of six recipients of "The Chairman's Award of Distinction", the highest recognition given by the organization, presented to one or more members who provided exceptional service and leadership to SEDC during the year.

Baldwin County received another strong vote of confidence when the 2009 SEDC Site Selection Committee recommended the Grand Hotel in Point Clear to be the site of the 2009 SEDC Annual Meeting, subject to final negotiations between Hotel and SEDC staff.  The meeting is expected to bring approximately 400 economic developers, site location consultants and other allies to Baldwin County.  The Grand event will be only the 2nd time that Alabama has hosted the Annual Meeting since SEDC's founding in 1946.  A team of economic development professionals from all over Alabama will partner together to plan, finance, and execute the event.  General Manager David Clark and his great staff at The Grand Hotel did a wonderful job in hosting the Site Team and convincing them that Baldwin was the best of numerous venues under consideration for the event.
 

Baldwin County has been ranked as the 8th strongest micropolitian economy in the United States according to a recent economic strength ranking study conducted by Policom Corporation.

The annual study used historical data and numerous economic indicators to evaluate 676 micropolitan and 361 metropolitan areas. The highest ranked areas have had rapid, consistent growth in both size and quality for an extended period of time.

According to Bob Higgins of the Alliance, “This study reinforces the message that Baldwin County has a thriving economy and is a great place to do business. We think this is primarily due to our pro-business governments, some innovative public-private partnerships, and our pursuit of quality jobs. Baldwin County can build on this ranking and improve and strengthen our economy by continuing our efforts in economic diversification and our continuing pursuit of quality jobs.”

Policom Corporation is an independent economics research firm specializing in the dynamics of local economies. You can get more information about the study at www.policom.com

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