OHIO RIVER CORRIDOR
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The automotive sector may be coming full cycle. Early in 2004, Cullman, Ala.-based Webb Wheel Products — a subsidiary of Marmon Group company Marmon Highway Technologies — decided to invest $23 million in a new wheel and drum manufacturing facility for heavy trucks in Tell City, Ind., whose most recent big project was a $2-million inbound call center for Accent Marketing Services. Ironically, Webb moved away from Indiana 22 years earlier, to garner the business advantages of locating in the South.
Halfway along the river between Louisville and Owensboro, Tell City will see 82 new jobs created by the Webb plant, located near one of its main suppliers, Waupaca Foundry. Half of the $2.6-million incentive package offered by Perry County will be financed through a tax-increment financing (TIF) district surrounding the site. State incentives valued at over $1 million will also benefit the project.
Webb is just one of many corporations finding Indiana at the core of a North-South corridor automotive strategy. That trend extends to the Evansville metro, where 16 projects popped up between January 2003 and August 2004.
Among them: a $30-million expansion by GE Plastics in Mount Vernon, a $3-million automotive painting systems plant from George Koch Sons and a new 250-employee plant from North American Lighting, which supplies headlights to Toyota and its truck plant in Princeton, Ind.
Evansville has also been one of several beneficiaries of the manufacturing re-organization under way at Whirlpool Corp., which is investing $8 million to re-start bottom-mount refrigerator production there, after moving it out of Evansville in 1996. That investment is in addition to the $5.4 million the company is investing to upgrade its top-mount line in Evansville, where it employs 2,400 people.
A bit down the road, Alcoa Warrick Operations has invested $93 million in its molten aluminum and flat-rolled sheet plant in Newburgh.
Halfway along the river between Louisville and Owensboro, Tell City will see 82 new jobs created by the Webb plant, located near one of its main suppliers, Waupaca Foundry. Half of the $2.6-million incentive package offered by Perry County will be financed through a tax-increment financing (TIF) district surrounding the site. State incentives valued at over $1 million will also benefit the project.
Webb is just one of many corporations finding Indiana at the core of a North-South corridor automotive strategy. That trend extends to the Evansville metro, where 16 projects popped up between January 2003 and August 2004.
Among them: a $30-million expansion by GE Plastics in Mount Vernon, a $3-million automotive painting systems plant from George Koch Sons and a new 250-employee plant from North American Lighting, which supplies headlights to Toyota and its truck plant in Princeton, Ind.
Evansville has also been one of several beneficiaries of the manufacturing re-organization under way at Whirlpool Corp., which is investing $8 million to re-start bottom-mount refrigerator production there, after moving it out of Evansville in 1996. That investment is in addition to the $5.4 million the company is investing to upgrade its top-mount line in Evansville, where it employs 2,400 people.
A bit down the road, Alcoa Warrick Operations has invested $93 million in its molten aluminum and flat-rolled sheet plant in Newburgh.
