Jeff [00:00:07]:

So everybody talks about site readiness, site readiness, site readiness. It’s hard to spend those dollars without a prospect, but it’s made such a difference in our case. And so we’re now going to have hundreds of millions of dollars of annual economic impact because we made that upfront investment. So I just encourage communities to be thinking about site readiness because that elevates it every time.

 

Amanda [00:00:28]:

That’s the voice of Jeff Rea, President and CEO of Indiana’s South Bend Regional Chamber. Every season we hear from a community who recently landed a big economic development win. And today Jeff joins us to share about a huge investment in Indiana GM and Samsung SDI’s $3.5 billion dollar investment in an EV battery cell plant. I’m Amanda Ellis, and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chamber, economic development, and talent attraction professionals. Learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com and with that, let’s jump in. Jeff, welcome to Inside America’s Best Cities. Thanks so much for being here.

 

Jeff [00:01:12]:

Amanda, thanks for having me. It’s a real honor to be here.

 

Amanda [00:01:14]:

So you are here to chat with us today about a very big project happening in your community of South Bend, Indiana. Can you kick us off? Just tell us a little bit about that project, the big highlights, why it’s a big deal?

 

Jeff [00:01:26]:

Yeah. So late last year, General Motors and Samsung announced plans to move forward with a new electric vehicle battery plant on the west side of South Bend in a small area we call New Carlisle, Indiana. So pretty excited about this. This is, at the time of the announcement, the largest investment in Indiana’s history, a $4 billion project. We expect somewhere between 1,700 and 2,000 jobs associated with it. So really excited about it. We work every day with businesses thinking about coming here and such, but to have one of this size and scale to be one of Indiana’s largest projects and to be really at the forefront of what’s happening in the future of automotive is pretty exciting for us.

 

Amanda [00:02:05]:

Yeah, that is pretty cool. I did not realize it was the biggest in your state history.

 

Jeff [00:02:09]:

So that’s, you know, it’s interesting when you talk about that, know the next project always exceeds that a little bit at something. But at the time, in terms of a single investment, and we’re fortunate. Indiana’s had some great success in the last couple years, its two strongest years ever. There’s other users going forward in this space, a couple of other electric vehicle battery plants just south of us in Kokomo with Samsung SDI and Solantis. But GM and Samsung have formed a great partnership. We’re excited that they’re going forward. And so late in 2023, we saw them start to move dirt. And so when you start thinking about this, this is not only in terms of dollar amount, but just in terms of physical size, too. They got about a 686-acre site out on the west side that they’re starting to move dirt on. We’ll have several million square feet under roof at this well, really spring. So now we’re starting to see it come out of the ground as that dirt has been moved. Building permits have been pulled, foundations are being poured right now, and the steel will start coming up very soon. And so over the next two years, we’ll see that project advance as construction happens.

 

Amanda [00:03:17]:

So since you’re already talking about the timeline a little, can you lay that out for us a little bit more? Like, when did this process start? Kind of bring us up to speed?

 

Jeff [00:03:25]:

Yeah. The site selection process oftentimes takes a really long time. We probably worked more than two years ahead of the announcement that happened last summer. So about two years of site selection as General Motors and that time LG were going through a process looking. They had three other plants across the country, were looking to do a fourth. Very late in the game, General Motors shifted gears and teamed up with Samsung instead. And last summer made their announcement that they were coming to Indiana and coming specifically to the South Bend area here. So that meant late ‘23 start moving dirt early ‘24, let’s get the building started going about two years of construction. We expect near the end of ‘25, or Q1 of ‘26 for the plant to be complete, for them to start doing some production in the first or second quarter of 2026, and it to be at full production by the end of 2027. So there’s a lot of factors that determine that, how quickly the EV industry takes off. But if we meet what they are projecting, the industry, we would anticipate that full production in ‘27.

 

Amanda [00:04:31]:

Was there anything unusual or out of the ordinary about this process compared to other site selection projects you’ve been involved with?

 

Jeff [00:04:38]:

Probably the size, scale, magnitude a little bit. When you start talking about these numbers, never have we looked at a tax incentive on a $4 billion project. Rarely does a project come along that wants 680 acres and such. And so very rare does a project need that much water or that much power or something. So we had a lot of things to figure out on that size. We had some great sites, though, and I’d say one of our things that really attracted him here was the work we’d done on the front end to get the sites ready. And we, that’s the collective we, that’s St. Joseph County, that’s our utility partners, it’s all of us working together. And so we had a site that was zoned, okay, that had site control on it, that had utilities available to it. And that really elevated us in the minds of not only this project, but dozens of others. And so although we’ve long thought GM was a terrific partner, they already have a great partnership in Indiana. They employ more than 6,000 people here. Their annual economic impact in Indiana is really significant. So they’re a known commodity. But we had a lot of people looking at it just because of the lack of large single sites across the country, especially that have utilities. And I say water and power are really valuable and we happen to have a concentration of both there. And that’s something that not every other community can offer and that’s elevated us in the terms of many projects.

 

Amanda [00:05:58]:

Yeah. Do you know anything about what other locations they might have been considering that would have had some similar amenities or not really?

 

Jeff [00:06:05]:

We don’t. No. In fact, it’s been interesting in the site selection process because sometimes you have a feel for that and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes we’re clear on some other sites we knew there were two other I would call southeast United States sites that were under consideration as well. And I think our site, just Indiana’s geography probably gives us some advantage just in terms of where suppliers are and how to get into the dealer network and rail and all those different kinds of things. But overall, we won out over those southeast sites. And I think that concentration of water and power and Indiana’s tax and business climate and workforce, all those things really tip the scales our way.

 

Amanda [00:06:43]:

Yes. Well, workforce is something I definitely want to talk a little bit more about. So how many jobs, again, is this project?

 

Jeff [00:06:51]:

Announced initially at 1,700. We would guess that it’ll probably go a little bit north of that. And those are the permanent workers that will work on-site. We have about 2,000 construction workers working to build the site as well. We’ll have as many as 3,000 on-site some days as the buildings coming out of the ground. So it’s sort of the short-term construction impact on the job side, but more so the long-term impact on the operation of the factory.

 

Amanda [00:07:13]:

Yeah. Whenever a lot of construction jobs are involved in a project like this, are those typically like more of a local impact or do some of those people come in from elsewhere? How does that normally work?

 

Jeff [00:07:23]:

Yeah, we’re estimating about half of them will come from locally and half them will come out from outside of the area. So it does have a significant economic impact. Those out-of-town folks are renting apartments or houses or hotels or bringing their fifth wheel trailer. They’re eating in our restaurants and shopping in our stores. So we think a significant impact on the construction side, but we simply don’t have the workforce here to handle it all ourselves. We’re pretty excited about what that’ll mean from people out of town coming in to experience our area.

 

Amanda [00:07:51]:

Yeah. As far as those longer-term, more permanent workers, though. So what does this look like in terms of making the case that you have that workforce for the project and or what plans are in place to make sure that you do? Because I know that’s kind of the hot-button topic of all of this lately.

 

Jeff [00:08:09]:

Yeah, it sure is. And I say we probably spend more time on that than anything else related to the projects. It’s the number one thing companies want to know. I’ve got a really talented team that put together a terrific labor market report to give them a great feel for that. Kind of mapped out where we thought those workers might come from. With 1700 jobs there you really have them all levels, the entry-level folks on up through the engineers and the management team. And so we know that a handful are going to come from out of the area that are going to move to this area. But again, a line share may come from already here.

 

Jeff [00:08:40]:

So when we look at where people are commuting from, maybe where some people are unemployed, Jim made a real commitment as well too, just to getting to know, let’s help develop some careers. And they’ve asked us, you know, please take us into different places in your community where we can plug into potential workers who maybe haven’t thought about this as a potential career, who might get on that path. So in our labor market report, we kind of mapped all that stuff out for them, helped them understand what wages would look like, where people were working now, how long we thought they were willing to commute. And it’s interesting because it’s the good and the bad right of this project. I think our current manufacturers are worried about this, right? They already can’t find everybody they need. And how in the heck are we going to find 1,700 more people and such? Well, GM historically didn’t have any problem finding their workers. In Ohio and the Lordstown project, they had 9000 people apply for 1,500 jobs and such. We’ve advised our current workforce, if you’re paying a good wage, if you’re giving good benefits, those things, I don’t think you’ll have any problem keeping people. If you’re not paying kind of the average wages in the community. You may lose a few to GM. I think there’s a fair amount of folks, too, that just commute outside of our area to work each day too, just looking for jobs. And I think that will bring some of them a little closer to home if they don’t have to commute quite as far from work. And then our hope is that with the management or the engineer or some of that, this will be a people play for us as well. We want to attract more people to the area. We’d like to grow our population. Some of the entry-level wages probably aren’t going to drive a lot of people, but the different jobs throughout it will certainly bring a lot more people to the area. We needed a project like this to sort of give people some additional reasons to come to our community.

 

Amanda [00:10:22]:

Yeah, that’s a great point about the commutes too. And like, people who maybe have been going a little bit farther out because who doesn’t want to not do that if they can avoid it.

 

Jeff [00:10:31]:

Yeah. The other thing I would say, too, just as you think about workforce like GM, for example, will have twelve-hour shifts, and that’s good and bad in some people’s minds. And some people, they’re thinking, if I could work three 12-hour shifts this week or four next week, and if I work seven out of every 14 days instead of ten out of every 14 days, imagine what that does for my own time and personal. And so GM’s had some good success, just even with the hours that they offer and providing some folks a little more time with their families and some more flexibility there. So it’ll be interesting as they begin the search for that workforce. My guess is we’ll see repeat performance like they’ve seen in their other plants where there’ll be a lot of applicants. And I do think not only the wage, but the benefit package that goes with it, the pension, some of those things will be attractive to folks who have been looking for some stability in their employment.

 

Amanda [00:11:26]:

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like they’re doing all the right things, which of course is so helpful, right, with getting the right people. And I love what you were saying, too, from a flexibility standpoint, because, of course, most manufacturing entities aren’t able to offer like, remote work or some of those ways that we might have top of mind about flexibility. But they’re thinking about how do they do that within what their business is and what they are trying to do so. I can definitely see that being a huge draw for people. Just that little bit of additional control over your time that we all want, right?

 

Jeff [00:11:54]:

Yeah, exactly. I think that’s going to be very popular. We’re still early, as I mentioned, we’re probably ‘26 and ‘27. So a lot of the workforce stuff hasn’t really happened in earnest yet. However, we’re working on developing a career center in St. Joseph County. We’re working with our local community college. Some of those will be a pathway into the GM plant. And so some of those programs are getting started at the early stages right now in anticipation for those jobs being open later. But this is a pretty high-tech workforce. The other things I’d mentioned about it, it’s a clean room. There’s no heavy lifting. It’s temperature-controlled. And so as you’re thinking about people who are working in manufacturing now, not only if I could commute less, if I got a little different environment, if it’s not heavy lifting and dirty and hot and some of those things, there might be a lot of other things there. And so we’re pretty excited about what this will mean for the workforce. I mentioned General Motors is a pretty known commodity. And it’s interesting for us because this is the front door step to a new and emerging industry in the automotive. We’ve been following EVs pretty close the last couple of years as we’ve been working on this, and there’s a lot of, are they going to make it? Are they not going to make it? Are people going to buy them? And historically, in 1900, we started producing electric vehicles in south Bent. The Studebaker company was headquartered here, and for two years, we built electric vehicles. That’s how far ahead of thinking we were of everybody else. But quickly, the Studebaker brothers decided not to produce electric vehicles anymore because there was no place to charge them. And so the movement went towards the combustible engines. And for the next 60 years or so, we produced the combustible engines here. We’re one of the four big automakers here. So we have this rich history of automotive innovation. And historically, the suppliers have still been in this area, but we have a rich history on the automotive side. One of our main employers is the Humvee. Everybody knows a Hummer or the Humvee military vehicle. It’s pretty recognizable around the globe. That’s made right here. They’re headquartered in South Bend, and they make those in Mishawaka, just adjacent to South Bend. So, rich history. This gives us that next chapter and our hope is that it’s just the beginning of a long relationship with GM. They’ve got a lot of property out there. If this goes well, we’d love to see them make future investments here as well.

 

Amanda [00:14:12]:

Yeah, you mentioned that just kind of the long couple years even, that this process had gone on before you actually got the announcement. How did you find out that you won the project? How’d you get the news?

 

Jeff [00:14:24]:

Yeah, it’s funny, we felt good about it all along. But you’re never sure, right? You’re never sure how many other people, they’re entertaining and such. We had a core team that was working pretty close with the team at and from the state of Indiana for quite some time, and we finally let our team know. And then we have to keep this a secret. Right. For a little while as well, too. It’s not ready. And announcements like this affect a lot of things up and down the road. Right? It affects stock prices and all kinds of things. And several times we thought it was ready to go and then something would happen nationally, globally, the UAW strike. There were a lot of factors that sort of influenced when this announcement was going to happen, but we’ve known for quite some time that we were their top choice and if we were able to put things together. But, yeah, quite a relief when you work so hard on this. You work a couple of years on a project and you finish second. Although it feels good that you were in the mix, finishing second doesn’t make you feel very good. And I think the neat thing for us then, too, obviously, this is a tremendous project, but it’s put our community on some radars that we weren’t on otherwise. So we’re getting some other looks and we anticipate another large project or two in the near future. And then we also have the GM suppliers that will follow. So there’ll be a handful of probably six or eight GM suppliers that are located in and around the plant area as well, too. So we kind of have this mini economic boom happening that this announcement was kind of the catalyst for.

 

Amanda [00:15:52]:

Very cool. We’ve talked about this a little bit along and along here, but anything you would add in terms of what you feel like makes Indiana and or your community specifically special and stand out for projects like this and will continue to?

 

Jeff [00:16:06]:

I’d say Indiana’s tax and business regulatory environment stacks up against anybody’s. And so I think that’s a big thing. The other thing I would do, though, was encourage communities to do site readiness, you know, we’re sort of not in this mix. We had a major project that we competed for a couple of years ago and we went down and we kind of got embarrassed a little bit talking to the company because our historic strategy was we think we could get that farmer to sell his property if you wanted it. We think we could get the county council to zone it if you were interested in it. We think we could get the utilities extended to it. So the county’s invested three and a half, $4 million in recent years on site readiness. Let’s get the zoning in place. Let’s get a utility plan in place, let’s make sure the infrastructure is there, and that will take the risk out of this and increase the probability of landing prospects. And so everybody talks about site readiness, site readiness, site readiness. It’s hard to spend those dollars without a prospect, but it’s made such a difference in our case. And so we’re now going to have hundreds of millions of dollars of annual economic impact because we made that upfront investment. So, for example, I just said we made a $3- or $4-million investment on the front end. Our economic impact of the wages alone at the GM plant is over $600 million annually. And so it sounded like a lot of money at the front, but now on the back end, it’s going to pay off in tenfold. And so we’re pretty excited about that. So I just encourage communities to be thinking about site readiness because that elevates it every time.

 

Amanda [00:17:34]:

Yeah. Any other advice for listeners thinking about landing that next big thing?

 

Jeff [00:17:39]:

Yeah, just patience. I think that we’re going to lose more than you win. And I think in our case especially, we really worked hard to understand the labor market, understand what companies are looking for these days. Make sure you’re able to articulate that back. Our labor market report is one of the best out there. I think we’re happy to share it with folks if they’re interested as a template or as a model, but keep at it, take some persistence and then you’ll get the right one.

 

Amanda [00:18:05]:

Yeah. So I always move into a fun question to wrap us up, but before I move to that, anything else you’d like to add about the project?

 

Jeff [00:18:12]:

No, I think that’s the highlight of it. I think just watch the evolution of electric vehicles, major investments happening in Indiana on charging stations and other things. I don’t think we’ll have the same problems that the Studebaker brothers had in 1900, where there was no place to charge these things. And so I hope with that investment, that’ll be good. It’ll be interesting we’re a cold weather climate. How do they perform in cold weather? I do think there’s a lot of innovation happening in this industry with batteries and such. And what do you do with trucks and all kinds of different things. So it’s fun for us to be in the middle of what’s happening and the evolution of that industry. And I think it’s going to be a while before combustible engines are completely changed, but I’ll just mention that real quick. But that’s a chance for our local companies. I mentioned we have a lot of suppliers here that have made parts for combustible engines for a long time, and so we’re working with them now because they have to be in this evolution as well, too. The electric vehicles don’t need as many parts, and so we also don’t want the electric vehicle to wipe out a bunch of companies that we have here. And we’re hoping those companies are continuing to evolve to be ready for the next generation of vehicles.

 

Amanda [00:19:17]:

Oh, yeah. I hadn’t even thought about it from that standpoint, but that makes a lot of sense, too, that you want all of them to be able to play well in the space, of course.

 

Jeff [00:19:24]:

Right.

 

Amanda [00:19:25]:

Well, I mentioned we always wrap up with a fun question. So thinking about your community, if someone were visiting for the first time, what is a bucket list item that they should be sure to?

 

Jeff [00:19:36]:

So it’s interesting. Our big one is the University of Notre Dame, probably, and that’s, you know, fortunate to have it here. It’s on many people’s bucket list, many people who grew up Catholic or watching football on Saturdays or something. So I always encourage people to start there and go experience the community from there. It’s a pretty special place. We’re fortunate to have it here. There’s so much research and innovation happening on campus that’s driving growth in our area, but also some amazing places to see so encourage people to make a trip up here and see it.

 

Amanda [00:20:05]:

Very cool. Well, thank you so much, Jeff. I think our listeners will get a lot out of this interview and really appreciate you taking some time.

 

Jeff [00:20:11]:

Thanks for having me, sure loved it.

 

Amanda [00:20:19]:

Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast, where we take you Inside America’s Best Cities. At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and review this show. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can also learn more about us at livabilitymedia.com. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at [email protected]. Until next time, from Livability, I’m Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America’s most promising places.