Chassen Haynes: We were able to announce the project in September of 2021. The company broke ground early 2022 and they plan to be in full production by 2025. So that’s a very quick project. It usually doesn’t happen that way. But the reason they were able to go so quickly is because of all the legwork that’s happened throughout, you know, the last 20 years.

 

Amanda Ellis: That’s the voice of Chassen Haynes, Senior Director of Business Development with the State of Tennessee. He joins us with insider info about one of the most buzzworthy economic development wins lately – Ford’s BlueOval City. Keep listening for tips to drive your community’s next big success. I’m Amanda Ellis and you’re listening to Inside America’s Best Cities, a podcast for chambers, economic development and talent attraction professionals on how to make your community even better. To learn more about this podcast visit livabilitymedia.com. And with that, let’s jump in. Chassen, thank you so much for joining us on Inside America’s Best Cities today. We’re so excited to hear some of the insider details about BlueOval.

 

Chassen Haynes: Awesome. Thank you for having me.

 

Amanda Ellis: I’m guessing most of our listeners already know the big highlights of this, but just in case, can you give a nutshell overview, the big highlights and why this is such a big deal?

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, so basically this is Ford Motor Company and BlueOval SK. They formed a JV partnership with SK On, and that’s what BlueOval SK is. And combined, they’ve committed to create 5,800 new jobs and invest over $5.6 billion in West Tennessee. That’s going to be a generational impact throughout the entire region. And so, this plant is going to be for the all electric F-series truck. That’ll be what Ford’s going to be doing. And then BlueOval SK, they’ll be doing the battery production side. And so, they’re also going to have onsite suppliers, and so, there’s going to be a lot of multipliers that come in from that aspect. But from an impact standpoint, I mean, even today, I was on site two weeks ago and they had 2000 construction workers per day on site. And then it looks like in the next couple of months they’ll have about 5,000 people on site. And so, having that influx of people and spending, they’re getting gas, they’re buying milk, they’re needing hotel rooms, things like that. We’re seeing new hotels popping up left and right out there in proximity. The site, just so you know, is halfway between Memphis and Jackson. And so, both of those cities are the population centers. And so, what we foresee happening here is really those cities coming together from a population standpoint, from a population heat map standpoint. If you’d look at something like what Nissan has done in Smyrna with in relation to Nashville, and then how Spring Hill, Franklin, Nashville have all grown together with General Motors as well. We see that, them all just spilling together.

 

Amanda Ellis: You said it’s between Jackson and Memphis. How close is it to the state line, Arkansas?

 

Chassen Haynes: It’s about 42 miles away on Interstate 40.

 

Amanda Ellis: Okay. One of my questions was, were there any regional considerations with that? But that might be a little bit… I mean, I’m sure the impact still spills over, but it’s a little bit further away than I had in my head.

 

Chassen Haynes: On that, we weren’t able to do anything on the front end for the regional impact just because of the confidential nature of the project. But on the back end, there’s going to be workers that drive. I mean, most Tennesseeans drive more than 42 miles to work every day, especially in more rural areas. And so, you’ll see workers going to this location from northern Mississippi, northern Alabama, eastern Arkansas. We may even see some from Kentucky and Missouri coming because it’s really not that far of a drive. We see about a 45-minute commute in that area being par for the course.

 

Amanda Ellis: Wow. 45 minutes covers everything you just mentioned?

 

Chassen Haynes: Yep.

 

Amanda Ellis: I didn’t realize that.

 

Chassen Haynes: It seems remote, but within a 45-minute drive time we did a labor study and the labor force is over a million people. It’s got a good reach for population.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. One of the things I definitely wanted us to talk about was how did we make the case? I say we since we’re all in Tennessee. How do we make the case that we have enough workers, enough talent for this project? And I’m guessing a lot of what you just talked about played into that. Anything you would add? Because it’s a lot of people. It’s a lot of people.

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, it’s a whole lot of people. And the 5,600 jobs, that’s just for… That doesn’t count the suppliers. I mean, they located on 3,600 acres and 3,600 acres seems like a lot, but when you put it into perspective from the western part of the site to the eastern part of the site, it’s seven miles long. It’s a considerable footprint and they’re going to try and fill up every bit of that just to maximize their land use. That means a lot of workers, a lot of new people. And so, going into it, selling this site, we started really, really pushing it in 2015. And selling the site, that was the first question that everybody would have was labor. How are you going to meet labor? And working with regional partners like Mark Herbison with HTL Advantage, he had the foresight just before the project kicked up, actually. He actually went in and did… He contracted with Vision First Advisors. It’s a third party consulting company and they actually provided a third party analysis, labor analysis based on if an OEM were to locate there. Even with that data and everything, though, we were still working through showing the company. Because if Ford and SK, they came, made a stake that they were coming, they were creating that many jobs, they needed to be able to fill those jobs and this partially falls on us. We were still trying to make that sale, even though the data said that it was there driving down the interstate. If you look on both sides of the interstate for the most part between Memphis and Jackson and then even from Jackson to Dixon, just a lot of trees. And so, we actually got the company up in helicopter a couple of times just to show it to their whole team, but we drove along Interstate 40 and showed them all the growth in East Memphis and Arlington, places like that. And then all of the growth coming out of West Jackson and helping them visualize it and then also showing them the data really helped us send that story home.

 

Amanda Ellis: Was this the site that was formally marketed as the West Memphis Megasite?

 

Chassen Haynes: There’s a west Memphis Megasite in West Memphis and that’s in Arkansas, but this site’s been called everything from the Memphis Megasite, west Tennessee Megasite, Jackson Megasite, I think at one point. But now we just get to call it Louisville City.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah. That’s better. That’s a lot better way.

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, so much easier. We don’t have to worry about it anymore.

 

Amanda Ellis: Chassen, can you talk us through the overall timeline of this project?

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, so it really started with the state’s acquisition of the land. We worked with regional partners to acquire the land about 20 years ago. What I always tell people is site development isn’t for the faint of heart. And so, developing sites over multiple administrations has been real task. We’ve spent significant amount of money even before Ford came looking for new land because when they came, they’re planning to be operational in 2025. And so, when companies are looking for sites, they’re looking for quick to market. As soon as they start spending money, they want to understand when they can start making money. And they also want to minimize as much risk as possible. And so, we had to get to the site to the point where the company had minimal risk an could see the finish line, see what was needed when. We ended up having to, we’re going to end up pumping the wastewater to the Mississippi River and that’s a 30-mile run. And so, that took a lot of conversations, a lot of people’s manpower. And so, that started in 2016 and we finished that up in 2020 just in time for Ford to be coming around looking for this. We’ve also spent money on interchange upgrades and road upgrades in the area, with Tdot putting a lot of money into that area. We really invested a lot on the site before Ford even showed up. And so, that’ll take us to when Ford showed up. We had already struck out several times with different companies. We’d already showed the site. Like I said, we had been actively marketing the site since 2015 and we had stacked up a lot of L’s. And we had learned our lessons and the stars aligned for this. We had already made all the mistakes that we thought we would make and that really led us to bring our A game for Ford. And so, when they called in February of 2021, they’re looking for 500 acres. We’re already limited on 500 acre sites, railserve, able to get a significant amount of power. And so, those sites got limited to two or three within the state. It quickly limited to two sites within the state, through… We had a virtual site visit because at the time everybody was still trying to figure out the post COVID world and how to look at real estate and everything like that. We were doing as much as we could on desktop, but six site visits later, we were able to announce the project in September of 21. The company broke ground early 2022 and they plan to be in full production 2025. That’s a very quick project. It usually doesn’t happen that way, but the reason they were able to go so quickly is because of all the legwork that’s happened throughout the last 20 years.

 

Amanda Ellis: It’s interesting, you were marketing it for several years and everything was drying out and then now everything’s happening relatively fast. Weird how that works sometimes.

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, very much so.

 

Amanda Ellis: Did the team working to land this, did you do anything out of the ordinary that you feel like sealed the deal or was there anything out of the ordinary about the process besides some of the things you just mentioned about pacing?

 

Chassen Haynes: The whole project within itself, the state owning 4,100 acres and marketing 4,100 acres and trying to recruit a large user to a pretty rural area, Tennessee, that’s unique in itself. But really, teamwork. I know that sounds so cliche. And to double down on being cliche, the volunteer spirit came out during this project. There was the state, there was ECD, but we also had so many partners within the state, whether it be TDAC, TDOT, Department of Labor, TBR, everybody. Everybody was coming to the table. Our regional partners, Memphis Chamber, Jackson Chamber, HTL. The site is actually located in Haywood County as we mentioned earlier, but that’s HTL Advantage, that’s Haywood, Tipton, Lauderdale Counties. But Jackson and Memphis came together to support because they had a lot more resources, a lot more manpower to help. And so, really all these people and departments and resources came together not trying to ask for what they’re going to get out of it, anything else. Everybody from day one knew what the end goal was and knew what the potential impact would be at the end of the day. And so, I would say that maybe our losses helped us get ready and know that this was going to take a village of people to push this boulder up the hill. But at the end of the day, it was very cool to see everybody come together selflessly and really get this over the finish line.

 

Amanda Ellis: Was there ever a point that you thought you lost the project?

 

Chassen Haynes: Several times. Every single time you’re working a project, it usually feels like you lose it at one point or another. But I’d say, I don’t know, about every week or two we’d have some sort of crisis situation and everybody gets stirred up.

 

Amanda Ellis: Sounds exhausting.

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, I looked a lot healthier and whatnot before the project. But we would run into obstacles. I wouldn’t say that at any point we’re sitting there in a circle crying thinking we lost the project over the time. We built a really good relationship with the project team with Ford and SK, and we were all just very frank and honest and they would tell us what they needed. We would tell them what we could do and we’d try and find middle ground. Sometimes the state would get a little farther and sometimes Ford would get a little farther. But no, I don’t necessarily think that at any time we thought that it was gone, gone. But there were definitely times where we saw seemingly insurmountable hurdles that we were able to overcome, usually from teamwork.

 

Amanda Ellis: How did you get the news that you won it?

 

Chassen Haynes: Honestly, I can’t even remember. I was sitting there thinking about it the other day and I have no idea because everything was just such a flurry of what’s the next task, what’s next? And the company was working through MOU with us and we were trying to figure that out. And there was also a play in Kentucky and we weren’t sure how that was fleshing out. And then we’re also still competing with other states in the southeast and Canada. We felt like it had gotten down to us, one other state in southeast Kentucky and then Canada. We didn’t know how far they were going along with it. But long story short, I have no idea. It’s just a blur. I don’t know how we found out.

 

Amanda Ellis: Well, and I bet once that happened you’re like, “all right, now we’ve been doing all this work. Now there’s a lot more work.

 

Chassen Haynes: Much more work. Yeah, having conversations seems like we’re still talking about Ford stuff three, four times a week. The fun stuff again, obviously the more technical people, they’re really getting after it. I mean, the amount of dirt and construction that’s taking place on site, you can definitely tell that Clay Bright, who’s the executive director for the Megasite Authority, the newly formed Megasite authority, you can tell he’s had his hands full just coordinating with Ford and SK. And he’s also building the water treatment facility and the wastewater treatment facility and overseeing various other construction projects out there. It’s exciting.

 

Amanda Ellis: What other comments would you have about the secret sauce, so to speak, again, being cliche in, Tennessee? What do you think made us special and made us stand out for this that you haven’t already talked about?

 

Chassen Haynes: I think I’ve pretty well touched on it from the state’s perspective. The companies have been looking for business friendly environments. Low taxes, and workforce is always at the center of everybody’s mind. Outside of us, coming together as a team and learning from our mistakes. At the core of state, what we’ve done for this project is not too dissimilar for what we do with every other project. We’re trying to figure out how to find them, a site that works for them, and we’re trying to make sure that there’s a business environment that they can thrive in because if they thrive, then they’re more likely to ramp up another project and hire more people. And as they hire people and ramp up, we need to make sure that they’ve got the workforce to fill their facility up. And so, we’re working closely with TBR and THAC and UT and higher Ed K-12. Everybody’s involved in this project right now. But they’re also at the table for a variety of other projects, creating workforce pipelines for a variety of different skills. And so, like I said, at the core of it all it’s very simple. It just explodes a little bit more with larger projects like this.

 

Amanda Ellis: I bet. Sounds very collaborative though overall, which is awesome.

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah.

 

Amanda Ellis: What advice would you have for our listeners in the field also working to land these types of projects? Anything?

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, buckle up. Like what you alluded to before, once you land it’s like the proverbial dog that catches the car. You just got to figure out a way to make it work. But no, on the whole site development side, you take punches and like I said, it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s got its ups, it’s got its downs, but at the end of the day, once you land a project, it’s all worth it. Jim Farley, the CEO for Ford at an event that he had out there, I guess in March or so. He told a story, he showed a picture of his grandfather. He worked at a Ford plant and I feel like he got pretty choked up telling the story, but he was like, “This is my grandfather. At the time, they weren’t like us. They didn’t have TikTok and everything else, taking pictures of everybody everywhere. It was the only picture that he could find of his grandfather was from his badge where he was a Ford employee.” And Jim just mentioned, if it weren’t for the opportunities that Ford gave him, providing him with a job, then Jim Farley wouldn’t potentially be the CEO of Ford Motor Company, one of the oldest automotive companies in the world. And so, stories like that really get you in your feels a little bit and really make you understand the impact that we’re going to have, this project will have on all of West Tennessee and really all of Tennessee and throughout the southeast. Makes it all worth it.

 

Amanda Ellis: Yeah, it’s huge. We always wrap up, Chassen with a fun question. And the fun question is, so thinking about where you are, so Nashville, greater Nashville, someone visiting, what would be a bucket list item they should do, but something a little bit off the beaten path that they might not know right off or find out about right off?

 

Chassen Haynes: Okay, so forgive me, I’m going to sound like such a nerd. I’m from Nashville. I don’t know why, but last night, no joke, was my first time to ever go to the Bluebird Cafe.

 

Amanda Ellis: I’ve never been either, actually. And I lived in Nashville some.

 

Chassen Haynes: Okay. We’ve always… My wife and I have, we’ve stood in line, we’ve tried to go before, we went last night for a songwriter’s night and there was just three songwriters that wrote tons of popular songs by Taylor Swift since she was in town. We’ll name-drop her. They wrote songs for her and Tim McGraw and all kinds of people. And we just sat around, I’d say about 30 or 40 people in the venue and it was really special. It really helped you understand Nashville instead of what you usually see on Lower Broad.

 

Amanda Ellis: I feel like we’re all so guilty of not doing some of the cool things where we actually live. It’s so weird. Everyone is like, “Oh, I’ll have plenty of time to do that thing.” It’s just not a priority and then you just don’t.

 

Chassen Haynes: Yeah, then you don’t do it. I was able to last night and it was a lot of fun. Bluebird Cafe, definitely. Definitely try and put it on everybody’s bucket list.

 

Amanda Ellis: That’s awesome. Funny timing too, that you just did that and you didn’t know that was going to be us today.

 

Chassen Haynes: I know. It’s perfect.

 

Amanda Ellis: Good thing. Well, thank you so much, Chassen. That was a lot of great insider info and I think everyone will really enjoy the listen. Thank you so much.

 

Chassen Haynes: Awesome. Thank you very much for having me.

 

Amanda Ellis: 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 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.