The Mississippi Development Authority is taking home the gold — to be specific, Business Facilities Magazine’s Gold Award for landing the Continental Tire project in Hinds County.
“Mississippi executed an impressive double play early in 2016 by winning the highly coveted Continental plant and simultaneously landing the new TopShip shipbuilding complex in Gulfport,” said Jack Rogers, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, in announcing the award. “The Magnolia State had a banner year—and we fully expect that its dynamic and well-executed growth strategy will produce even greater success in 2017.”
As part of its deal with Mississippi, Continental agreed to create 2,500 jobs that pay an average of $40,000 per year. Continental’s overall investment would total $1.45 billion, the company said.
TopShip LLC, which makes vessels for offshore oil and gas drilling companies, inked a deal with the state in which they promised to create 700 jobs in Gulfport.
Gov. Phil Bryant posted on Facebook that the accolade “further cements Mississippi’s position as a leader in advanced manufacturing.”
Business Facilities, which is based in Tinton Falls, N.J., hosts its deal-of-the-year contest annually. Economic development organizations defined by city, state or region can submit up to three projects and pay a $50 entry fee to the contest, according to the magazine’s website.
The magazine also said Mississippi overcame a number of challenges to seal the deal with Continental, including the discovery of a cemetery and approximately 270 marked and unmarked burial plots on the site.
In addition, Gov. Phil Bryant personally asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for wetlands mitigation permits — about 100 acres would be affected — to speed up site development. Also, as part of the memorandum of understanding, Hinds Community College would help train Continental’s workforce.
This year’s silver and bronze Business Facilities deal-of-the-year awards went, respectively, to the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development for a $789 million General Motors plant expansion and the Georgia Department of Economic Development for Honeywell’s new software development center in Atlanta.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.