Inventing the Wheel
International Paper site acquisition
is the "Right Thing to Do"

(Editorial from the Mississippi Press)

Jackson County Supervisor Tim Broussard is right. County supervisors and port commissioners are offering a cutting-edge idea when it comes to resurrecting dead industrial sites, like International Paper's Moss Point Mill.

"We are inventing the wheel," Broussard said Wednesday. "We are showing people how to rehabilitate these properties and turn them into something fantastic in a relatively short time."

Indeed, with easy access to the interstate system, rail and waterways, the mill site is prime for economic revitalization.

That's only part of the reason that the county's $3 million purchase of the International Paper property — as well as the planned investment of $500,000 for infrastructure improvement — was the right thing to do.

The city of Moss Point has taken an economic pounding in recent years, with the 2001 closure of the IP plant and other setbacks.

With the announcement earlier this year that the British firm Corus Bi-Steel is coming to Moss Point, coupled with the International Paper purchase, there are clear signs that an economic revival may be on the horizon.

Rehabilitating a site with a 90-year economic history in our county also provides an economic development lesson for the rest of the nation, particularly the Rust-Belt states, where abandoned plants dot the landscape, along with the potential hazards they bring.

With IP's commitment to shoulder site cleanup of a prime location, local economic development officials — like an eager suitor — will have a diamond to offer in its efforts to win the hearts of quality firms.

Our region has a talented, ready and able workforce, in a county whose leaders are deeply involved in building a workable economic development vision.

Too, our Legislature has a track record of being forward thinking on economic growth. Witness the funding for Northrop Grumman expansion.

Gov.-elect Haley Barbour is right in saying that each of Mississippi's regions need economic development strategies that fit the unique gifts of those regions.

Our economic development leaders — including Jackson County Economic Development Foundation Executive Director George Freeland, Foundation President Jerry St. Pé, Port Director Mark McAndrews and others — clearly understand this.

We have great confidence that because those leaders "invented the wheel" with the IP purchase, continued growth in all of our communities, and with Corus Bi-Steel coming, our county will be on an economic roll in the not-too-distant future.