Detroit South - Part 2 (Revving Up Small Towns)
Wednesday, February 07, 2007JEFF YASTINE: Sixteen years ago, BMW became the first foreign auto maker to build an auto assembly plant in the southern United States. Since then, nearly all the major foreign car makers have built at least one, if not more, plants in the region. As I explain in my series "Detroit South," it's a trend that's remaking the many small towns in its path.
Few towns have seen the kind of changes that Lincoln, Alabama, has in recent years. As the 1990s drew to a close, this community of 4,500 people was not much different than a thousand other towns in the region. This rail line tied together an economy dominated by agriculture and textiles. But all that changed 6 1/2 years ago, when Japan's Honda Motors chose Lincoln as the site for a U.S. assembly plant. Now in operation for five years, the plant recently rolled its one millionth vehicle off the line, a milestone as much for the residents of Lincoln and surrounding communities as it was for Honda. Carroll "Lew" Watson is Lincoln's mayor.
MAYOR CARROLL "LEW" WATSON, LINCOLN, AL: Honestly, I am amazed. You know, we expected growth, but nothing on the level that we're seeing.
YASTINE: Eddie Smith quit a job at a Birmingham steel mill to come to work here.
EDDIE SMITH, PAINT DEPT. MANAGER, HONDA MFG. OF ALABAMA: As far as salary, from the steel industry to the automotive industry, basically, the automotive industry has been a little better. The economic impact for me has been very good and for the associates also.
YASTINE: It's hard to overestimate the impact of a plant like this on the local economy. There's about 4,500 people who work here and there's about 1,500 more who work at local parts companies which supply components to this plant. On top of that, the average line worker here makes about $54,000 a year and that's about a 50 percent increase over what the average Alabama resident makes each year.
Those wages have set off a building boom in the surrounding area, where rural countryside is giving way to subdivisions and split-level suburban homes. Even towns miles from an auto assembly plant, like Columbus, Mississippi, are seeing similar benefits. Taking shape just outside town, a huge new mini-mill, designed to manufacture automotive grade steel. The project is being built by a newly organized steel company, SeverCorr, to capitalize on the auto industry boom in the region. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want us to move this building up here. They want us to take this set of tracks and put this on the end of the building, and move the building north.
YASTINE: And business recruiters like Joe Higgins, having landed one big fish in SeverCorr, are pulling out all the stops to catch even more and put Columbus and surrounding Lowndes County on every industrialist's map.
JOE HIGGINS, CEO, COLUMBUS-LOWNDES DEVELOPMENT LINK: We're in the heart of the southern automotive corridor. Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Benz are all within easy drives for materials. We've got six railroads in Columbus. We've got a river port and river access to the upper Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico. We have four universities within a 75-mile radius. And it's just making us -- quickly making us the south's number one address for a lot of these type of projects.
YASTINE: In fact, Eurocopter, a division of Europe's Airbus industries, is expanding an existing plant here. A site under construction nearby will be home to a factory building military unmanned aerial drones, a new south, taking shape alongside the old one.
