< Previous“What better way to rejuvenate a community than to put in advanced clean energy manufacturing?” Nanoramic founder John Cooley was quoted as saying. “What I see is opportunity when we drive around Bridgeport.” Nanoramic is receiving no state or local incentives. Bourdeaux says Advance CT, which began courting the company in the spring of 2022, provided help in securing the federal infrastructure grant. He foresees other advanced manufacturers buying into Connecticut. “You’ve got a strong foundation here and something that’s in short supply elsewhere, which is predictability. One of Connecticut’s old nicknames,” he says, “is the ‘Land of Steady Habits.’ To some people, that’s a pejorative, but if I’m a CEO, I need some predictability. My marketplace is chaotic enough. Where I put my company needs to be steady, needs to be solid. And that’s what we’re delivering in Connecticut.” A big battery project is coming to Bridgeport Photo: Getty Images/DenisTangneyJr A big battery project is coming to Bridgeport. Photo: Getty Images/DenisTangneyJr.INTELLIGENCE REPORT TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY JANUARY 2024 by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com78 JANUARY 2024 SITE SELECTION When it comes to economic development, TVA’s team, partners and communities know the importance of preparation. by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com I f Ben Franklin really did coin the maxim, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,” he certainly wasn’t thinking (despite his obsession with electricity) of the Tennessee Valley Authority that would be created years in the future. But it’s fair to say that TVA, which just celebrated its th anniversary, is thinking far into the future when it comes to everything from economic development support to building a site portfolio to resource planning. An Alexander Graham Bell quote may be more appropriate: “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” at chestnut is a propos because of the association of an inventor with the sort of industrial development innovation TVA has practiced for decades. After all, the organization did invent the term megasite. “Everything is transformational in product development, even if its just due diligence on a property” or pre- construction work, says Bill Adams, senior target market specialist in product development and one of the TVA folks who introduced the megasite concept. Sometimes the site is so transformed it results in a location. “One that comes to mind is in Bristol, Tennessee,” he says of a -acre site at Bristol Business Park where grading and site prep began in . e parcel was identifi ed by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Tennessee Valley Authority INTELLIGENCE REPORT Born Ready TVA in July 2023 secured 279 MW of advanced thin fi lm solar panels from First Solar for its planned Lawrence County Solar Project in Lawrence County, Alabama. Photo courtesy of First Solar80 JANUARY 2024 SITE SELECTION Community Development as a Select Tennessee Certified Site (one of only 18 sites in the state to receive a $500,000 grant from the department) and also received a grant from the TVA Invest Prep program. “It was basically a hillside,” says Adams. “We provided funding for the grading and before it was even finished, somebody wanted it. It’s a perfect example of physical transformation.” The reason megasites are important — increasingly so in the current busy megaproject environment nationally thanks to reshoring and a host of federal industrial development programs — is they transform timelines. “It’s the time savings and the risk minimization that come with the whole megasite certification process,” Adams says. Such fully documented sites mean “you have a turnkey plan ready to go, shrinking the timeline for clients and minimizing the risk.” A full inventory of TVA sites across all categories can be found at a new platform: tvasites.com. Making a Difference The InvestPrep program rolled out its 12th year of activity in December 2023. Since its launch, Invest Prep sites have welcomed 41 projects associated with 11,130 jobs and more than $9.3 billion in capital investment. The TVA Economic Development team’s InvestReady product development program functions similarly to InvestPrep, but is designed to operate proactively, identifying market-driven needs initiated by the product development team. The program has provided over $9 million in combined funding to improve nearly 7,000 acres for industrial use.” Often, as in Bristol, the sites are backed by state programs in addition to TVA support. Beyond Tennessee, such programs have been developed in three other states in TVA’s seven-state territory via the Kentucky Product Development Initiative (PDI), Mississippi Site Development Grant (SDG) and Alabama Site Evaluation and Economic Development Strategy (SEEDS) Act programs. The TVA annual report for FY2023 featured a selection of 13 projects (see chart) representative of the Valley’s momentum across all levels of the site portfolio. Projects have included Fiberon (310 jobs) in Columbia, Tennessee; Magna in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee; Tri-City Extrusion ($30 million, 50 jobs) in Bristol; Aluminum Dynamics (from Steel Dynamics) with a major $1.9 billion, 700-job aluminum rolling facility in Columbus, Mississippi; and Ascend Elements in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. There is no shortage of testimony about the power of TVA programs in those communities and beyond. “To say that TVA’s site and product development programs have made a tremendous difference in our recruitment efforts would be an understatement,” says Greater Jackson Chamber Chief Economic Development Officer Mandy White, whose community in Madison County recently welcomed an investment from Georgia Pacific. “Without this program, I can confidently say that we SELECTED PROJECTS IN TVA TERRITORY (FISCAL YEAR 2023) COMPANY NAME INDUSTRY SECTOR CITY COUNTY STATE CAPITAL INV. First Solar Clean Technologies Huntsville Lawrence AL $1B Nucor Corp Advanced Mfg. Decatur Morgan AL $125M Hanwha Qcells Advanced Mfg. Dalton Whitfield GA $383M Osmondson Manufacturing Advanced Mfg. Mayfield Graves KY $12M Aluminum Dynamics Advanced Mfg. Columbus Lowndes MS $2B Huber Engineered Woods Manufacturing Shuqualak Noxubee MS $418M LG Chem EV Battery Materials Clarksville Montgomery TN $3B Ultium Cells EV Battery Mfg. Spring Hill Maury TN $275M United Record Pressing Manufacturing Nashville Davidson TN $11M Handsome Brook Farms Food and Industrial Tech. Morristown Hamblen TN $31M Hitachi Zosen Inova USA Clean Technologies Knoxville Knox TN $7M 6K Energy EV Battery Materials Jackson Madison TN $200M Richardson International Food and Industrial Tech. Memphis Shelby TN $220M82 JANUARY 2024 SITE SELECTION would not have announced the largest announcement in our city’s history. The program allowed us to shave more than a year off of the time required to prepare the site to be ready and only then met the requirements of the project. Without it, we would have been eliminated from consideration.” Aaron Stewart, the new executive director of the Brownsville-Haywood Economic Development Corp., recently welcomed a project from Enchem. “Haywood County has seen unprecedented and explosive growth thanks in large part to TVA Economic Development’s product development programs,” he says. “We’re seeing a surge of nearly 10,000 new, high-paying manufacturing jobs in our county on sites that their team has helped develop. New homes, commercial growth and badly needed investments in our educational system, infrastructure and first responders have all been made possible by TVA’s economic development staff and programs.” Hopkinsville, Kentucky, is now the home of a huge $310 million, 250-job investment from Ascent Elements, a maker of sustainable lithium-ion battery materials. “The TVA Invest Prep program has allowed us to leverage resources to develop sites for speed- to-market needs,” says South Western Kentucky Economic Development Council Executive Director Carter Hendricks. “Their research and technical services continue to support marketing and recruitment efforts, saving our organization countless hours and resources. These programs have better positioned our profile, competitiveness and self-image.” The View from The Gulch It can help to have those charged with attracting new company locations and expansions to go through their own relocation to upgraded digs. For the TVA economic development team, that means “Welcome to The Gulch, ladies and gentlemen.” The Gulch is a walkable, LEED- certified neighborhood located between downtown Nashville and Music Row where TVA’s Nashville TVA’s new Nashville Collaboration Center in The Gulch brings a tech company vibe to the daily work of one of the top economic development teams in the nation. Photo courtesy of TVACollaboration Center is opening as the New Year begins. That’s where I found Adam Murray, manager – target market specialists for TVA Economic Development, as he talked to me from the Shoals room, one of several territory- themed rooms at the center the team is relocating to from its former location by Nashville International Airport. “Now we’re downtown in the middle of everything happening in Nashville,” Murray says. “It’s a lot easier to host people” with the latest communications technology, an open office format and even a virtual reality room where, Murray says, the team can show prospects some of the main sites in the region before literally taking them there on a helicopter. Among recent projects, the $1 billion solar panel manufacturing investment in Huntsville from First Solar stands out, he says. “It’s neat to be able to locate projects whose products either our customers or TVA itself would use,” he says, noting his organization’s goal of building out 10,000 megawatts of solar capacity over the next several years. The facility complements a growing solar manufacturing site from South Korea’s Hanwha in TVA’s North Georgia territory. The lead for the project came through TVA’s renewables group, says Murray’s colleague Will West, a target market specialist, as First Solar was supplying panels to one of TVA’s large solar development partners, Silicon Ranch Corp. “They had already sold three years’ worth of panels,” says West, who was looped in with First Solar’s real estate and construction arm as well as its manufacturing operation. The search started by looking at the entire TVA region and soon, with the assistance of a Savills advisor, got narrowed to Muscle Shoals and the eventually chosen site in Lawrence County near Huntsville. “They liked that area because with all the growth in North Alabama, they could tap in and they were the bigger fish in the pond,” West says. “Lawrence SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2024 8384 JANUARY 2024 SITE SELECTION County was the perfect fit. That industrial park worked out because they needed to move at lightning speed and for their power needs, there was a large substation they could tap into. “We got creative with how we would support them,” West says of the team’s collaborative economic development effort with Joe Wheeler Electric Membership Cooperative, building on that internal need for panels by offering the site of a TVA solar development just down the street from the plant as an R&D test bed. It also helped that the park had gone through the InvestPrep process with all punch list items punched. In the EV and battery arena that has brought so much success already to TVA territory, 6K Energy, a producer of engineered materials for lithium-ion batteries, broke ground in Jackson in June for the construction of the world’s first sustainable multi- chemistry cathode manufacturing plant, a $200 million, 230-job facility scheduled to open in Q3 2024. The project is supported by a $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. “For them and the Jackson team [including site consultant Maxis Advisors], they did so much work ahead of time that a lot of it was plug and play,” West says. “Speed was essential. From a cash flow perspective, we are able to introduce some of our incentive programs. Their process is interruptible, so we’re looking for them to participate in our demand-response program. We will reward them for being on call even if we don’t drop it. That got them to a rate that was comfortable. For that project, the timing worked out perfect. Right now they are working on some of the engineering with Jackson Energy Authority.” Amid pronounced growth in the region, demand-response is a way to help with peak demand. “We want reliability to be our No. 1 factor. So demand- response, with existing companies or new companies, is a way we can help save them money without having to spend a bunch of money on new generation,” West says, describing the concept as a virtual power plant. “Other companies in the recruitment phase are open to those conversations too. A lot of companies realize they can do it and think ‘Why would we not receive the benefit?’ We have conversations and ask ‘What is critical load? Safety load? What are those thresholds?’ We’ll then propose solutions.” Conversations indeed are the key. “Some prospects have said they don’t trust we can do this. But then we talk and ask ‘What’s your ramp-up? When you say 100 megawatts, is that day one, or do you need 20 megawatts day one and then build out?’” West says, citing one company’s concerns about getting the power they needed when they needed it. “When we could sit in a room with the local power company partner and understand the steps they needed, we had solutions for them on each step of the way.” Adam Murray says even though new announcements have slowed slightly in the EV space, the region continues to Adam Murray, Manager, Target Market Specialists, TVA Economic Development Murray State University in Kentucky is one of dozens of higher education institutions looped into workforce development in TVA territory. SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2024 85 see a large number of prospects. “There are a lot of projects in the supply chain now,” he says, and because of past wins landing major operations from the likes of Ultium, SK and AESC, the supply chain opportunities exist in such areas as cathodes, anodes, electrolytes and separators, “not only because we have the battery manufacturers but because of our location. The success that’s happened in Ohio and Georgia puts us in a good location to serve other OEMs as well.” Sandwiches and Chips TVA has been working with Korean battery maker SK Innovation for some time now at the former TVA Certified Megasite that’s how home to the $5.6 billion Ford Oval City development near Memphis. But the team is working with another SK too: SK Foods, which makes pre-packaged meals and sandwiches for clients such as Starbucks and convenience stores, is investing $205.2 million and creating 840 jobs eventually at Spring Branch Industrial Park in Cleveland, Tennessee. TVA Target Market Specialist Tyler Chaffee say several Southeast states were in the running. Brief concerns about wetlands were quickly quelled by Doug Berry, vice president of economic development with the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce, who’d already talked to the Corps of Engineers about addressing the issues. “That park has had several successes related to InvestPrep funding,” observes Adam Murray. “That set the stage for that park to be successful.” Creative solutions came into play in Jackson too when Georgia Pacific’s project was landing on a site with a gas line right through the middle. The site was chosen over other sites within and outside of the Valley.Next >