ATLANTA (Aug. 18, 2009) - Georgia gubernatorial candidate Eric Johnson says he supports breaking up the 1,500-acre Chatham County mega-site that former Gov. Roy Barnes once touted as the future home of a Daimler-Chrysler plant.
"Mitsubishi - if that is in fact the prospect - is just the type of company to break up the site for," Johnson said during a Q-and-A at Atlanta commercial real estate firm Carter (a Wilbert News Strategies client). "It's sitting empty. We've had some good companies look at that site, a lot of people don't know that."
Barnes announced that Daimler-Chrysler would build a $750 million plant on the site weeks before he lost his re-election bid to Sonny Perdue in November 2002. In 2003, Daimler canceled plans for the plan, and today the mega-site's prime property lay fallow. That could change soon, though, if Georgia agrees to bust up the site to attract Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric. Mitsubishi and the Georgia Department of Economic Development are "in final negotiations" that would result in a new Mitsubishi manufacturing plant on part of the mega-site, according to the Savannah Morning News.
The state has been reluctant to break up the site, in hopes of attracting another auto company to it. But automakers such as Volkswagen, which selected a site near Chattanooga, picked other places to set up shot instead.
Enter Mitsubishi, which initially eyed another site in Pooler, for a plant to build power generators. Mitsubishi apparently now would like a slice of the mega-site for the $350 million plant, where the average worker will be paid more than $60,000 a year.
If the state agrees to subdivide the mega-site, Mitsubishi builds a plant and Barnes wins back the governor's mansion in 2010, we will have come full circle - sort of.
who would I contact about the construction of the mega site?
Posted by: Jeremy Dyches | November 01, 2009 at 12:57 AM