These announcements mark one of the biggest trends in northern Alabama, according to Brian Hilson, vice president of economic development with the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce, and that trend is toward greater diversification. "The perception that a lot of people have of the Huntsville area is that it's a high-tech community that does some fancy things in the space industry," he ex-plains. "And that is true, but the community is much, much broader than that. We've made a lot of headway in our diversification."

In fact, Huntsville is now home to 27-foreign based companies; it is an established leader in electronics manufacturing and information technology; and nine biomedical companies have established facilities in the region. In 1999, northern Alabama saw investments from such diverse groups as Target, Skyhook Technologies, Boeing, Ferguson Enterprises and Vintage Pharmaceuticals. Vintage, which already has facilities in Huntsville, is expanding its operations with a $56 million expansion and 300 jobs.

Among the more traditional businesses locating in northern Alabama is Skyhook Technologies, a Utah-based aviation-support company. Skyhook selected Huntsville for its helicopter refurbishing facility, which will be located in the Redstone Arsenal. Leasing a 12,000-sq.-ft. (1,115-sq.-m.) hangar, Skyhook will employ up to 500 workers in the next three years.

Also, Boeing, which already employs approximately 3,000 in the Huntsville area, is moving more of its operations to northern Alabama as well. First, the aerospace firm has relocated a facility from Georgia to Huntsville, creating 300 new jobs. And Boeing Sikorsky is moving its joint venture management office from Philadelphia to Huntsville's Cummings Research Park, adding about 50 new jobs.

In other industry segments, north Alabama is coming into its own as a distribution location as well. The area's strong infrastructure network is the key attraction for these facilities. In fact, the north-south corridor of Interstate 65 bisects north Alabama, and the Port of Huntsville is an excellent industrial and air cargo facility, with direct nonstop service to Europe, Mexico and Asia. The Tennessee River also provides barge access to the Gulf Coast as well as the Great Lakes.

"In Target's case, our highway transportation coincided with their basic geographic needs," says Hilson. "Huntsville, for many years, has been a cotton farming community, so we have a lot of flat land, and now many of the cotton mills have been converted to fantastic industrial and research areas. So we didn't have any difficulty in finding a large site that met Target's needs."