Alabama shows the prep work required to make it look easy

Alabama has been making it look easy to attract the auto industry for the past 20 years. In addition to bringing in major automotive projects from Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Hyundai and Toyota, the state saw Mercedes announce last September it will spend $1 billion more at its Vance assembly plant to build electric vehicles there. And in January of this year, the city of Huntsville won the bid for a $1.6 billion joint-venture assembly plant between Toyota and Mazda that will employ 4,000 people.

But the backstory of the Toyota-Mazda project reveals just how much work has been going into laying the groundwork to bring the auto industry to Huntsville.

State and local government agencies, aided by the seven-state power provider, the Tennessee Valley Authority, have been working for a decade - since 2008 - to gather and prepare the raw acreage outside Huntsville that will now become the Toyota-Mazda auto plant, expected to open in 2021.

In 2008, Huntsville commissioned land-use consultants to create a master plan for thousands of acres there. The city began investing in roads, sewer and utilities soon after, including paying to widen the major road that leads to it from the region's Interstate 65.

Two years ago, acting on behalf of local government, TVA had the land deemed a "certified megasite," with third-party consultants reviewing all aspects of the property to ensure that no surprises might complicate its development into an intensive-use industrial site. The certification means that, in addition to meeting an automaker's criteria for access, logistics and workforce, the site will have no engineering problems, no environmental issues, no archeological concerns, and no underlying legal liabilities.

Once approved, the Huntsville Mega Site was shovel-ready for construction - all of it more than a year before an actual automaker expressed any interest.

"The Tennessee Valley did not win the Toyota and Mazda competition overnight," U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, who represents the 5th Congressional District, said in a statement when the new auto plant was announced. "Rather, this victory is the culmination of decades of hard work and leadership offered by local, state and federal officials who have consistently worked together."