Georgia Town to Become 'Kia-ville'

The small town of West Point, Ga., was in the process of dying after it shed its base of textile jobs in the ‘90s. Now that Kia plans to open a plant there, the town is experiencing a renaissance.

After receiving $400 million in tax breaks and other economic incentives, Kia will build a $1.2 billion plant on 2,200 acres of former cattle farms. The plant, located roughly 80 miles south of Atlanta, has already hired 500 workers, but plans to employ 2,000 more by the time the plant opens. Several Kia suppliers will need 7,500 more people to meet demand created by the new plant. The plant will build the Kia Sorento SUV, and residents have already dubbed the town “Kia-ville.”

Last year, we wrote about the hope and potential devastation that automobile manufacturing can bring to small-town communities, using Indiana as an example. Building cars is a unique type of economic lifeblood, and one only needs to look at West Point to see why: The Kia plant has 43,013 applications already, with 75% coming from Georgia, 20% from Alabama and the rest from auto workers across the country, including Michigan, according to the plant’s director of human resources, Randy Jackson.

While obviously not all of those applicants will get a job with Kia, West Point will gain an estimated 20,000 jobs in the next five years thanks to the factory. The city is seeing its first new subdivision in 25 years going up, and local businesses have reported a strong uptick already.

Yet the industrial Midwest is the perfect example of why towns built around one employer stand to suffer the most in hard times: The pain of towns and cities across Michigan, Indiana and Ohio serve as a testament to just how quickly boom can turn to bust.

Town Hits Economic Jackpot to Become 'Kia-ville' (CNN.com)

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Comments

It'a a good thing it's a new plant that can convert to building other vehicles because I'm sure the manufacturing of the Sorento SUV won't last. The moral of the story for all of these Communities is be careful of who you partner with economically. Whether you are willing to admit it or not GM has destroyed most of these communities whereas Toyota, Honda, Subaru, Hyundai, BWM, MB, etc, have had the opposite effect. If you build quality attractive vehicles Americans will buy them.

Tell that to the Mississippi people who are NOT going to have a Toyota plant.

Makes me wonder why would they choose such a remote site to build a plant. The only closest interstate is I-85.

Cheap land, cheap wages, no union and a whole lot of tax breaks. Not brain science, Kia went and got themselves a deal.

Probably for the same reason that a lot of American movies and tv series are done in Canada: they don't have to deal with the unions there.

It's location is quite good actually. It's near the Chattahoochee river, LaGrange and Columbus Georgia, and Atlanta. It's also near the Alabama border.

The Hyundai plant in Montgomery Alabama is also located is a fairly rural area south of Montgomery. It borders I-65 and Highway 231. Hyundai does quite well there.

I believe the Kia plant is in a great location. The people in the West Point, Valley/Lanett area will surely benefit. The area has been in decline since the mills closed several years ago. There simply sin;t much else in the area as far as employment goes.

would like to know about applications for the plant have a bachelors in design from full sail university in Florida but live in alabama