■ COVER STORY
G
by Jessica Sabbath reensvi le Coun
hiigh spirits.
eensvillle County and s ate o ficia s w h gh spi
and state officialls were in
n 2015, Swedish carmaker Volvo was llooking for a loc tion for i s first U.S.
IIn 2015, S edish c rmaker olvo was ooking for a location for its first U.S.
manufactu ng plant. The company had n rr the l liist down to two sites and the 1,600-acre Mid-s, and the 1,600-acr, Atllantic Aantic Advanced Manufactu ng Cen er (MAMaC) in Greensville had made the cut.
manufacturing plant. The company had narrowed the st down to two s
eensville had made the cut. Volvo’s final site visit had gone
so well that local and state officials were exchanging high-fives as the plane carrying auto executives took off. “We were like: ‘We’ve got this. This is ours,’” recalls Natalie Slate, Greensville’s economic develop- ment director. Then came the letdown. Weeks later, Volvo announced
it would build the factory outside of Charleston, S.C. — a $500 mil- lion facility that promised to create 2,000 to 4,000 jobs. “It just broke our hearts,” says Slate. It’s been three years since that
heartbreak, and Slate is hopeful again.
With the help of a $2.2 mil-
Natalie Slate is hopeful that the Mid-Atlantic Advanced Manufacturing Center (MAMaC) will soon attract a major prospect.
lion grant from GO Virginia, a regional economic development program, Greensville has made the enormous site “infrastructure ready.” The county has engineered and built part of M AMaC’s sewer system and purchased rights-of- way needed to bring electricity and natural gas to the site. A business locating there could be up and running in 18 months or less — a critical parameter in snaring big economic development deals these days.
Photo by Mark Rhodes
www.VirginiaBusiness.com ed Mid- anced Manufacturing Center (MAMaC) “If [Volvo] were to come back
today, I think they would choose us,” Slate says. “We’ve mitigated all the risk that we could foresee. So, we’re ready. We are more ready than we’ve ever been.” MAMaC, which is owned by
the Greensville County Industrial Development Authority, is a mega- site, a loosely defined term for very large tracts of land used to attract major manufacturers. Typically, megasites encompass at least 500 acres. In the last year, two similar
massive sites have come online along the Virginia-North Carolina line. One is the Commonwealth Crossing Business Centre in Henry County, and the other is the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County. In fact, most of Virginia’s existing megasites are in Southern Virginia. Grants from the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission have aided their development. Megasites are big gambles.
They require millions of dollars of investment in the hopes of big payoffs. Many Virginia megasites now are trying to improve their
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