Mayor Tommy Battle said the recently-created Tax Increment Financing District will double the size of the Von Braun Center. Photos: Derek Lacey/Axios
Huntsville's next major growth corridor: Swancott Road.
Driving the news: Mayor Tommy Battle addressed Alabama Associated General Contractors yesterday, noting development in that area west of the airport and big investments elsewhere.
The city annexed nearly 650 acres there in Limestone County, set for a new P-8 school, with the remainder for residential and development.
Battle told a full crowd of local contractors that "we've already platted about 4,000 lots over in that area."
What they're saying: "It really follows exactly the way that we had planned it," he said. "We put the jobs in place, and they were north of 565," naming Mazda-Toyota, Polaris and GE Aviation.
"We've got to have a place for these people to live who are working there, and we've started planning on putting a school in place," he added, and work is underway on updating the road system to accommodate more traffic.
He also noted recent announcements like Glaukos' $80-million-plus facility and Eli Lilly's $6 billion plan to construct an advanced manufacturing facility for GLP-1 production.
Zoom out: Battle said the focus was on adding middle-income jobs when he took office in 2008, as the city had plenty of entry- and upper-level jobs.
After landing businesses like Polaris and Aerojet Rocketdyne (now L3Harris), the city soon found it had more jobs than people, he said, and the focus turned to drawing more residents with quality of life investments like the city Music Office and Orion Amphitheater.
The bottom line: "We've taken care of our growth for the next five to 10 years," Battle said. "I think we've done pretty well on that, but the next thing that we're working on is what happens in that 10, 15, 20-year period."
