The $250-million expansion in Lawton, Okla., that Goodyear announced in 2002 finally saw the $36.7 million in incentives promised by the state after a constitutional court challenge to the Industrial Development Taxable Bond program was turned back by the state Supreme Court in April 2004. In September 2004, the bonds were finally put on the market, and sold in less than a day.
      The complex is adding 175,000 sq. ft. (16,258 sq. m.) of plant space and 346,000 sq. ft. (32,143 sq. m.) of warehouse space to increase its overall footprint to 2.4 million sq. ft. (222,960 sq. m.), all in the service of making bigger tires, not necessarily more of them. The original plant was constructed in 1977 with an $80-million investment. Goodyear is also currently investing $50 million in an expansion at its Cali, Colombia, plant, in order to serve the Mercosur marketplace with medium-duty radial tires.
      The Oklahoma project also saw over $4.8 million raised by a quarter-cent sales tax passed by Comanche County voters.
      In Union City, Okla., just west of Oklahoma City, Australian clay brick maker Boral Limited will open a new $35-million plant in the same city that saw the closing of its plant there a decade ago. The new facility will have an annual capacity of 100 million standard brick equivalent units (SBEs), a 43-percent jump from the old plant's capacity. Serving Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas accounts, the plant will use its output to replace that currently sent by the company's east coast facilities. The plant will increase the company's overall U.S. capacity by 6 percent, taking it to 1.66 billion SMEs.
      "Increasing our brick manufacturing capacity with a low-cost, state-of-the-art plant in the southwest will better serve our customers in those markets and will eliminate the cost of shipping bricks from our other plants," said Emery Severin, president of Boral USA, based in Atlanta. The company is also involved in a joint venture to build a $12-million clay roof tile factory in Trinidad, and has recently acquired a family of concrete, quarry and masonry businesses in Denver, Colo., for $78 million as part of its rise in the aggregate arena. As of the end of 2003, the company's U.S. focus was 73 percent residential and 12 percent commercial, with the rest of the business split between infrastructure and institutional projects.
      Completing the Sooner autumn trifecta was the announcement by project-happy Dell Inc. of a 120,000-sq.-ft. (11,148-sq.-m.) customer contact center on a 60-acre (24.3-hectare) site in Oklahoma City. Originally projected to employ 250 when it was first announced in July, the center was expected to employ around 700 by the end of 2004.
      Dell still has plenty of international projects, like its expanding customer support center in Glasgow, Scotland. But 2004 was a big year for Dell projects in North America. The company announced a customer contact center in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in July; a fulfillment center in West Chester, Ohio (in partnership with APL Logistics), in September; and, finally, its huge $100-million, 1,500-worker computer assembly plant going in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina.