Shane Davis, Director of Economic and Urban Development for the City, compares recruiting businesses to college basketball’s Big Dance.

The tournament stokes office and online pools and water cooler talk about busted brackets. Davis previously used the analogy to explain his job to his daughter, who played high school sports.

“Competing for industry, to me, it’s like NCAA basketball, it’s like March Madness,’’ Davis said. “A lot of these mega-projects you’ll have 23 states (competing). It could range from 10 and we’ve had projects where they looked at 30 states. They’ll start out with anywhere from 50-130 possible sites. So when you start that first initial response to showcase your community your odds are pretty low.

“Then it’s like getting to the next round and the next round and your odds start going up. Then when you get to what I call the final group there may be two two sites, there may be four. I tell our team, ‘Look, our site is a good site. Logistics work, utilities work, the site works. Now, what makes the difference between finishing second or finishing first and bringing these jobs to the community.’ ’’

While nothing is likely anytime soon to displace Space and Defense as the City’s major college cards, manufacturing is making a push to be a hub in the state and southeast. Huntsville alone has added 14,000 manufacturing jobs since 2014.

One of the more celebrated additions to the local business landscape was the large $2.3 billion Mazda Toyota Manufacturing (MTM) plant that began operating in 2021 and keeps expanding.

The first-ever 2023 Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid will be built at the site off Greenbriar Road. It was unveiled during a ceremony in early June. The first-ever Mazda CX-50 that was introduced in January and the gas powered Corolla Cross, which debuted in 2001, will also be assembled in Huntsville.

According to Davis, Huntsville officials are in lockstep with new business, but stay in “constant contact’’ to make sure the startup needs are met and is perhaps one reason MTM is putting billions into the facility.

“I think you’ve seen that with expansions at Mazda-Toyota,’’ he said.

There are other reasons Huntsville is bringing in manufacturing business:

Job growth could mean higher wage opportunities for workers
A method to keep Huntsville job growth on an upward trend
City administrators continually identify key locations for possible expansion
High quality of healthcare
Yearly transportation upgrades with checks to make sure workers have corridors to travel in and out of a city drawing from 16 counties including Tennessee
Short drive to larger cities such as Nashville and Atlanta
Lower cost of living than many metro areas
Quality of life, another focus of city leaders, with a vibrant entertainment scene and outdoor recreation

Those are just some of the highlights the city and area offers for a business to consider when making a large investment.

“A lot of these projects that consider Huntsville and other parts of the U.S., they’re going to hire thousands for new jobs,’’ Davis said. “Some will be local and regional with an opportunity to secure those jobs and have a better life for their family. But there’s also a section of that project in most cases where 10 or 15 percent of the current workforce is going to get transferred from somewhere else to get that project or facility up and running.

“Their most valuable asset is their employees. Quality of life is huge. If they’re told, ‘We’ve made a decision to expand and, by the way, I‘m going to need you to move to Huntsville, Alabama.’ They’ll say let me look at it and want to feel comfortable about coming. That’s a huge decision. It’s got to be somewhere they want to be. That’s critical for industrial development.’’

Huntsville was recently named the top place to live in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. If this were a basketball tournament the city would certainly be considered for a high seed.

“This is a good location today,’’ Davis said. “It’ll be a good community tomorrow and 10 years from now, 20 years from now.’’

Cover image provided by www.sellersphoto.com