October 18, 2006

EDITORIAL/Land as economic development tool

Having available land for industrial expansion and recruitment isn't as outdated as some have suggested. The county's chief economic developer still believes in the practice - and we tend to agree.

Some see private high-tech investment and entrepreneurship as the cutting edge and suggest the county should not be in the land business.

Most likely there is some middle ground, but a good analysis of trends would be in order.

U.S. manufacturing remains strong, contrary to popular perception, although the number of jobs has decreased, which simply suggests more efficiency.

As large numbers of low-tech manufacturing jobs have gone to Mexico and Asia, there has been a demand for more skilled manufacturing jobs, a trend that is likely to continue, experts say.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez in March pointed to the strength of U.S. manufacturing, according to a report in Industry Week.

During his speech at National Manufacturing Week in Rosemont, Ill., Gutierrez pointed out that the U.S. still surpasses other industrialized nations in economic growth.

The U.S. has doubled its manufacturing output since 1985 and is significantly outpacing Mexico, Germany, France and Japan in production, Gutierrez said, and since 2001, productivity in the U.S. has grown at an average rate of 3.8 percent, the fastest rate since World War II, the report said.

Gutierrez pointed to the need for more workforce training and education to keep pace with the rest of the manufacturing world. Manufacturers should become more involved in the U.S. educational system and encourage students to study math, science and engineering and pursue related careers.

Amen!

And Madison's own Dr. Hank Bounds, state superintendent of education, is preaching the same message as he lobbies to overhaul education in Mississippi. Bounds envision making Mississippi high schools workforce laboratories, which should help students, especially those who will never attend college but would need one of the high-end manufacturing jobs to live comfortably.

Greater Chicago is bucking the steady decline of manufacturers in the Midwest, according to Site Selection Magazine.

The magazine reports that according to a 2006 forecast by William Testa, vice president and director of regional programs in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, "Not all of the surrounding Midwest manufacturing activity is moribund. The region's capital goods industries, such as the machinery and equipment industry, are expanding."

Between 1995 and 2005, the United States lost more than 3 million manufacturing jobs, the Brookings Institution reports. In Mississippi, during the year ending second quarter 2006, almost 4,000 manufacturing jobs were lost, an analysis of economic trends by the FDIC shows.

Is that decline due to the lack of education and training as the low-end jobs evaporate in Mississippi?

Probably so.

So what's to think Madison County can't attract high-bay warehouse and distribution facilities along Interstate 55 and the Canadian National Railroad line, perhaps around Nissan and one of the new interchanges?

Being able to offer land at an inexpensive price might be an incentive, especially if plans to build a new county airport succeed.

"The biggest challenge we face now is securing enough land to ensure the future growth of our businesses, and primarily in the manufacturing and technology sectors," said Tim Coursey, executive director of the Madison County Economic Development Authority (MCEDA).

Manufacturing in America isn't dead, but we better be ready to compete globally.

Coursey said that his goal is for MCEDA to secure 2,000 acres, and he's eyeing warehouse facilities which he says are hot.

"If we don't secure a significant amount of land now, it will be used for residential development and we will have nothing to grow our job base with," said Coursey. "We've got to have some more land."

He's right.

The Highland Colony Parkway was cited by those who doubt his proposal as an example of high-tech development that sprang up largely on its own without MCEDA land.

But at a cost of about $10 million, the county and the city of Ridgeland built the 8.5-mile parkway on right-of-way donated by landowners who have profited handsomely.

MCEDA doesn't need to abandon having available land just yet.