Even without the assurance of a corporate project, Mississippi's EADS candidate, Stennis International Airport in Hancock County, is busy lengthening its runway from 8,500 ft. to 9,500 ft. (2,591 m. to 2,896 m.) and adding a new air traffic control tower. But the runway's location inside a 125,000-acre (50,588-hectare) acoustical buffer zone is an additional attraction for industrial prospects.
      The airport's owner, the Hancock County Port & Harbor Commission, also operates the 3,600-acre (1,457-hectare) Port Bienville Industrial Park, a shallow-draft port, a short line railroad, and two potable domestic and industrial systems. The Stennis candidate site was most recently on the short list for EADS rival Boeing's 787 project. (An Airbus rival to that aircraft, the A350, is the would-be recipient of the EU subsidies now under WTO scrutiny.)
      "We have added to our infrastructure every year for many years," says Airport Manager Bill Cotter, "and it's the reason, once again, that Stennis has made the short list for a very important aviation industry project."
      At the state's other end, the booming logistics capital of North Mississippi continues to build its presence in what could be called the greater Memphis metro economy. The most recent project is a 1.2-million-sq.-ft. (111,480-sq.-m.) DC for Helen of Troy, a personal care and household consumer product company. The facility will go up on a 60-acre (24.3-hectare) site at Hillwood's DeSoto Trade Center, part of the center's ongoing 450-acre (182-hectare) expansion. Hillwood will partner with College Road Land Company to market and develop the remaining acreage. Helen of Troy, which is selling its former 619,000-sq.-ft. (57,505-sq.-m.) DC in Southaven, will employ 200 people at the new site when it opens at the end of 2005.
      In Tishomingo County, near what Yellow Creek Port Authority Executive Director Eugene Bishop calls "the strategic junction of the Tennessee River and the Tenn-Tom Waterway," Skyline Steel, a division of Arcelor Group, is investing $17 million in a steel processing facility that will employ some 100 people within its first two years of operation. Its end product is as transport-oriented as its location: steel rolled structural pipe used primarily in heavy construction such as buildings, bridges, and wharves.
      The partnership involved in luring the plant involved a wide and deep array of local, state and federal officials and agencies, including U.S. Senators Thad Cochran and Trent Lott, Gov. Haley Barbour, Tennessee Valley Authority, Mississippi Development Authority, Northeast Mississippi Planning & Development District, Appalachian Regional Commission and Northeast Mississippi Community College.