By John Howell Sr.

The coming Toyota manufacturing facility, currently on hold at Blue Springs, is still “a go,” state Representative Warner McBride said during remarks May 26 to the Batesville Exchange Club.

“There appears to be increased activity in that area in the last month or two, so I think that there’s no question that you’ll be seeing an announcement before too long,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to say the exact date, but I do think they’re still committed to coming here and that they will be operating that plant.”

McBride represents House District 10 which includes portions of Panola, Lafayette and Tallahatchie counties, and serves as chair of the House Transportation Committee.

“As transportation chairman we put together a pretty comprehensive piece of legislation providing financing (including) … $90 million to build a four-lane highway from Pontotoc over to Sherman to the Toyota plant,” McBride said.

“We made sure that there was a commitment from Toyota to open up that plant over there before we built that highway,” the transportation chairman continued. “They keep telling us, ‘We’ll be building cars before y’all have that highway built,’ so I’m confident that that will happen,” he continued.

He noted that the Pontotoc-to-Sherman route could be used by workers commuting from Oxford and Batesville to the plant.

McBride said that Highway 6/278 between Batesville and Oxford “is going to be one of the highest growth areas in this state. Our (Batesville’s) challenge is to work together with them  (Oxford),” he continued.

Meeting with planners and developers on a weekly basis, “the ones that come here want to go east and the ones that come to Oxford want to come west. So it’s just going to happen,” McBride continued.

The representative said that Katrina’s aftermath and now the BP oil spill, “… is going to take a toll on this state. In the meantime, I think it’s driving things to the north.”

“We started it here in this community with General Electric, and with the recent announcement of the expansion where in another three years they’ll be up to 500 jobs, one of the most high tech industries in the United States,” McBride continued.

Following GE Aviation came an announcement in January of 500 jobs in Tunica County for the manufacture of stainless steel pipe, an additional 500 jobs to build solar panels in Tate County, and “at least one other industry that’s looking to create at least that many more jobs here close to us as well,” he said, bringing the prospect of 2,000 jobs to northwest Mississippi in recent months.

“Do y’all know where Piperton, Tennessee is?” McBride asked. Between Collierville and the state line, “they’re building a new town, they’re building the town of Piperton, Tennessee,” the representative continued, “and they’re putting in a huge intermodal yard that’s being put in by Norfolk Southern Railroad.”

“They don’t have the property they need in Tennessee that they need to locate industry, so they want to come into Mississippi,” he continued, to utilize the Chickasaw Trails Industrial Park begun about 10 years ago, “and they want to use that property to put distribution centers and warehousing, so we’re working with them to provide the transportation to allow them to come across the state line which will be very good for extreme north Mississippi,” he said. “It’s a good joint project for two states to work on,” he added.

McBride said that the main developer at the state line intermodal project has been William Adair, who also owns considerable property west of Como.

“So there’s a lot going on in Mississippi in spite of the fact that we have some difficult things going on too in challenging times,” McBride said.