Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Two years ago, Governor Youngkin decided to pull the plug on a $1 billion project that would employ 2,500 folks at the Berry Hill site in Pittsylvania County. This was a tough blow to our region and the economic development community that had worked on the project.

The project was described as a battery plant for Ford Motor Company. Buried in the details, however, was that it would be a Chinese project operated by the Chinese Communist Party. The facility would be under the complete control and management of the Chinese.

Local and state opponents of Governor Youngkin chose to attack his decision not to offer economic incentives to the development in such a quest for this project. Ford Motor and their Chinese associates, therefore, shifted the project to an area like ours in Michigan. Michigan, home to traditional manufacturing, was very supportive even though the locality thought Virginia was right in not offering taxpayer money for such a project.

Recently, after repeated attacks from Democrats around Virginia particularly Northern Virginia and Tidewater, it turns out that the project was over projected. The headline out of Michigan is as shown from the Bridge Michigan website:

“Michigan economic development officials on Tuesday slashed incentives for a Ford electric vehicle battery plant by hundreds of millions of dollars, a tacit reflection of the company’s 2023 decision to downsize the project.”

“With Ford now planning to create 1,700 jobs instead of 2,500, the Michigan Strategic Fund Board unanimously voted to trim as much as $626 million in job-creation and property tax incentives — a 60% drop in state aid.”

“Since the state first agreed to over $1 billion in incentives to land the project in early 2023, Ford has scaled back plans for its sprawling Blue Oval Battery Park outside Marshall.”

“Initial plans called for $3.5 billion in company investment. That’s now down to $2.5-$3 billion as the company trimmed its share of the overall business park from more than 700 acres to just over 500 acres.”

“Ford plans a 1.8 million-square-foot manufacturing facility to build electric vehicle batteries, which the company said Monday is 20% complete. The automaker is also building huge battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky.”

While construction has been partially completed, there is no assurance that it will be as large as now projected or that it will become operational soon. When considering the problems with the electric vehicle market and the losses that Ford is saddled with in each car and truck they sell, they may delay operations until a long-term plan is established to gain auto buyer’s enthusiasm for these vehicles.

RETURNING TO THE VIRGINIA ISSUE

It will be interesting to see if Governor Youngkin’s distracters will acknowledge this massive change. My belief is they will conveniently ignore this story.

Economic Development Issues are extremely important to our area.

Economic development is important for every community. Our region wants any assistance the state can offer; however, it should be done wisely, and incentives should be focused on what is good for localities and provided to American companies and our allies rather than countries and governments that are our greatest competitors. You have my commitment to assist the state and localities in this process.

Tammy Mulchi serves as the District 9 state senator. She can be reached at senatormulchi@senate.virginia.gov or by calling 804-698-7509.