Site Development Grant Program helps communities compete for new projects.
Mississippi is constantly growing its inventory of developable sites in an effort to shore up competitiveness and attract new industry. A return-on-investment analysis shows that this investment is working.
After launching a small pilot program in 2014, the Legislature fully funded the initiative in 2017. Since then, the program has taken flight and is now soaring.
How effective has it been? Consider this: Since the official launch of the Site Development Grant Program nine years ago, Mississippi has landed more than $50 billion in corporate capital facility investment deals on state-funded sites.
How much did the state invest to win these projects? Around $180 million. By any form of math, that equates to a blistering ROI.
Site Development Grant Program funds can be used to support site due diligence or site improvements on publicly owned industrial property. Grant funds can also be used for site due diligence on optioned property, public infrastructure improvements or expansion projects directly serving publicly owned or optioned property and assistance in acquiring publicly owned real property for industrial development purposes.
After creating the Site Development Grant Program in 2017, the Legislature went back to the drawing board in 2024 and authorized nearly $30 million in site development grant funding across the program’s three branches: Ready Sites, Premier Sites and Select Sites. Grant recipients must secure local matching funds.
Ready Sites are designed for properties that have a minimum of 20 highly developable acres that are site-work ready within six months or can have utilities on site within 12 months, according to the Mississippi Development Authority (MDA). Gateway Industrial Park in McComb, for example, was awarded a Ready Site grant to support improvements in 2018. In early 2025, Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED celebrated the grand opening of its new, $15 million sales, warehouse and distribution facility at the industrial park on 12 acres near Interstate 55.
Premier Sites are properties with a minimum of 100 acres that have distinguishing site location attributes, such as being in high-demand locations and offering intermodal and/or port access.
Select Sites were created in 2021. This program is designed to increase the number of highly competitive industrial sites available to meet the needs of prospective companies. Publicly owned industrial sites in Mississippi are invited to apply for Select Sites funding. Today, the state has over 35 Select Sites and is aiming for more.
It’s All About Speed to Market
“Readiness is critical,” MDA Program Manager Sally Williams says. “Having land that has not been fully vetted is not enough to be considered ready for industrial development. We have seen the speed at which projects today are moving. Everything is now on an accelerated timeline. If a company does not have to spend millions of dollars preparing a site, that is worth a fortune. They want to have confidence that they can move forward without the risk of unknowns.”
Every day, all around Mississippi, MDA and its local economic development partners are working overtime to remove those unknowns by preparing large tracts of land for shovel-ready industrial development.
Williams says the Legislature made this possible when it had the foresight to fully fund the program a decade ago. “They have faithfully funded this program every year since 2017,” she says. “We have seen this program grow steadily over the years. It has been a key area of focus for Gov. Tate Reeves. At MDA, our focus has been on awarding grants directly to communities that are preparing sites for development.”
To qualify for aid, a site must be either publicly owned or under public option. “If they have already purchased the site, we can help the community make physical improvements on it,” says Williams. “We can help with wetlands mitigation, pre-engineering costs, permitting and other due diligence.”
MDA also works with local community leaders to prepare very large land tracts known as megasites. “Megasites are some of our state’s most competitive sites,” says Williams. “They have the potential to recruit high-tech industry. These are sites of 1,000 acres or more. It takes longer and costs more to develop megasites. We are helping our communities take the steps necessary to get these sites ready for development.”
Since 2017, the Mississippi Legislature
has appropriated
$180 MILLION
to fund the state’s
Site Development Grant Program.
Source: MDA
To say this program is working is an understatement. Amazon Web Services in Madison and Warren counties and Compass Datacenters in Meridian materialized because of substantial state and local investment into prepared sites. Compass is a planned $10 billion campus in Meridian just off I-20 in eastern Mississippi, while AWS is now up to $25 billion in planned data center facilities in Madison, Warren and Hinds counties in central Mississippi.
Neither would have happened without the state-funded Site Development Grant Program. “When AWS announced the first two locations in Madison County, one of their projects took the 800-plus-acre megasite in the county. This is the same megasite where Amazon had already built and opened a large fulfillment center.”
“Readiness is critical. Everything is now on an accelerated timeline. If a company does not have to spend millions of dollars preparing a site, that is worth a fortune. They want to have confidence that they can move forward without the risk of unknowns.”
— Sally Williams, Project Manager, Mississippi Development Authority
Compass selected a 200-acre site that was considered one of the state’s top sites on I-20. “We helped the community develop that site,” says Williams. “Since then, AWS has also announced projects in Warren County and in Hinds County.”
$180 Million and Growing
Other examples abound. Cold-Link Logistics located a 200,000-sq.-ft. facility on the I-59 industrial site in Jones County, where the firm is investing $64 million and employing 84 workers. “That project is on one of our top sites of over 400 acres,” says Williams. “In the last year, Amazon opened a distribution center at the I-59 Supply Chain Park. The grand opening was a few months ago. We’re still helping Jones County develop that park.”
The most satisfying wins, Williams notes, are the ones that happen in small towns. “One rural community never had a site visit until we started doing due diligence for them on a site,” she says. “They said that there is a new energy that comes from that. They say it enables them to respond to more RFIs. Our Sites Program encourages small towns to invest in preparing sites for development; and this is happening all over the state.”
To date, the cumulative total of state investment into preparing sites is $180 million. Local communities statewide have matched that figure. “There is momentum that comes with this,” says Williams. “It inspires people to do more.”
Sara Watson, Director of Business Incentives, Mississippi
Development Authority
Sara Watson, director of business incentives at MDA, says, “We also get positive feedback from site selection consultants. It creates a lot of energy. It helps that the governor has been proactive in making big grant funding announcements. That in turn gets other communities’ attention too.”
Equipped with another $40 million in site funding for the year ahead, look for the state to add to its inventory of industrial parks and other prepared sites, says Williams. “We have seen communities start small and gradually develop something impressive over time because of this program. Whether they need help in building a road, grading a pad or building a pad, these funds can be used to make planned industrial sites a lot more competitive. It does not have to be a large site, but we will fully study the parcel and look for a way the state can help.”
