Bringing plant to the Shoals involved many people, hurdles

Bringing a major railcar manufacturer to the Shoals started with what seemed like a routine inquiry more than a year ago.

Almost simultaneously, officials at the Shoals Economic Development Authority heard from three agencies informing them that consultants representing a railcar company wanted to know more about a site in Colbert County that could possibly handle a huge manufacturing plant. Huge in this case involved a structure nearly a mile long and 450 feet wide.

The contact came in late May 2006.

After 14 months of research, fact-finding, hard-nosed negotiations and problem solving involving economic development officials and government officials from Washington, D.C., Montgomery and the Shoals, the deal was officially done Wednesday afternoon.

National Alabama Corp. officials announced they had found a home in Alabama. With it comes 1,800 new jobs, a total that doesn't include hundreds of additional jobs during the construction phase. Company officials say they are making a $350 million investment in the Shoals.

And nothing came easy.

Gov. Bob Riley called the company's chief executive officer, Greg Aziz, a "tough, tough negotiator." He added that the project was one of the toughest he has been involved in as governor.

"I can't tell you how many times that we could have thrown in the towel," Riley said.

U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., was heavily involved in the project from the start. He said he and Riley talked a dozen or more times about the project and he also kept "getting everybody together when we sensed it was beginning to get away from us a little."

"We kept asking what else can we do; what do we need to do to make it happen," Cramer said.

Forrest Wright, executive director at SEDA, just shook his head when he was asked if he's been involved in a tougher or more complex project.

"There's no way to tell how many hours went into this and from a whole lot of folks," Wright said. "There were so many people from so many different levels involved in this seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

"This has been described by the governor and Alabama Development Office as one of the mega-projects. Mega-projects require mega-efforts. We can do big things in the Shoals when we're working together."

Wright said the process began when consultants representing National Steel Car, a Canadian-based company, contacted the

Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Alabama Development Office.

The question: Do you know of an industrial site that could handle a mile-long-facility?

Barton Riverfront Industrial Park was among those that immediately came to mind and quickly became the leader among Alabama sites.

"They knew we were one of the good sites that could be suitable," said Wright, who was contacted that same day.

The consultants asked for a variety of information about infrastructure and other matters. The same request went out to several communities, particularly in the South.

Aziz said Wednesday there were 150 possible sites under consideration originally. Company officials knew they wanted to be in the South, if possible, and the search centered on Memphis, which is the crossroads for train travel in the United States.

"This was a very competitive process," Aziz said, adding that he personally visited sites in 10 states and met with government and economic development officials there.

Company officials knew what they needed and started looking to narrow the field. And if a community didn't have the right answers to the consultants' questions, it was marked off the list, Wright said.

"It's an elimination process at that point," Wright said. "The first 90 percent of the process, from our standpoint, was to keep from being eliminated."

The Shoals made it to list of five finalists for the project, and the list was later narrowed to three and then two, with Columbus, Miss., being the other finalist.

Making the cut meant more detailed information had to be obtained. Incentives became an issue that monopolized a lot of time for those involved.

As Riley pointed out, National Alabama Corp. will likely be one of the largest economic development projects announced this year in the United States. With that comes huge incentive considerations.

The state joined local governments to put in about $110 million to lure the 1,800 jobs.

For the state, that meant convincing Alabama voters to approve a statewide amendment that allowed the state to raise its cap on an industrial recruiting fund. The voters delivered, helping the Shoals project and an even bigger operation involving a German steel plant in Mobile.

But local governments faced the reality of being tapped out. They had used general funds and even gone into the bond market to land other projects like the Retirement Systems of Alabama tourism effort, SCA Tissue, a Walgreens call center and North American Lighting.

Mayors of the four largest cities in the Shoals gathered with commissioners from the two counties -- among others -- and reviewed several options to generate the kind of money needed to be a player in the project, which was known at the time as Project Tiger.

It can be said now that landing the project can be attributed, at least in part, to half a penny. That's the amount of sales tax increase that was proposed to help local governments pay the millions needed to be a player in Project Tiger and address other economic development needs.

Wright and others involved in the project said the half-cent sales tax increase was essential.

"We discussed it at length, and we did not see a way to do what was expected of us with our current resources," Wright said. "It would have been very difficult without it."

It took state Sen. Bobby Denton, D-Muscle Shoals, and other members of the state legislative delegation nearly an entire session to get individual bills passed that gave commissioners the authority to increase the tax.

The commissions adopted the increase in June, with only one commissioner in both counties voting against the measure.

The additional tax will begin being collected Aug. 1 and is expected to produce $6 million per year.

Another critical part of the process involved giving National Steel Car assistance in building the massive plant. That's when the Retirement Systems of Alabama stepped forward.

"That was absolutely critical to the process," Wright said.

David Bronner, chief executive officer at RSA, said his agency is financing up to $350 million for plant construction.

Suddenly, all signs began to point to the Shoals as the company's preferred site.

"We knew in the spring that we were the right answer," Wright said. "We knew we were the best answer. The company didn't tell us that, but we could tell by the questions they were asking."

SEDA officials remained persistent and did not take any detail for granted. And getting it done continued to involve numerous people.

Wright said SEDA's goal was to keep everyone going in the same direction.

"There were lots of different hands on this, and we were the funnel," Wright said. "There were lots of folks negotiating, but they didn't need to be negotiating separately. Everyone had to be on the same page."

Aziz said the choice was made to build in the Shoals a few months ago, but "negations were ongoing, even up until (Thursday).''

That's when Wright was given the-go-ahead to set up the long-awaited announcement.

Bernie Delinski can be reached at 740-5739 or bernie.delinski@timesdaily.com.

Tom Smith can be reached at 740-5757 or tom.smith@timesdaily.com.