Once again spurning the state of Georgia’s Pooler megasite, Daimler AG is set to announce a major expansion of its North Charleston van assembly plant that will bring at least 1,200 new jobs to the region, according to The Charleston Post and Courier.
The newspaper said Monday that the announcement is scheduled for Friday morning at Daimler’s plant in Palmetto Commerce Park, adding that the company will begin making Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans from scratch at the local factory to meet demand in North America.
That announcement comes on the heels of a report by the Atlanta Business Chronicle that, with the decision to relocate its Mercedes-Benz USA headquarters to Atlanta, Daimler was once again eyeing the megasite for its new van manufacturing plant.
The decision to build in North Charleston, where Daimler has had a Sprinter assembly plant since 2007, likely puts to rest any possibility that the auto giant will look again at the Pooler property.
A prime parcel of land at the intersection of Interstates 16 and 95, the megasite was purchased by the state in 2002 and developed with Daimler in mind.
At the time, the biggest economic buzzword from Atlanta to Savannah was the $750 million, 2.3 million square-foot Sprinter van plant that most state and economic development officials — including Gov. Roy Barnes — were convinced was a done deal for the megasite.
Work was expected to start in July 2003 on what was to have been the state’s single largest economic development coup that year, adding more than 3,000 well-paying jobs and infusing more than $150 million a year into the local economy.
Instead, Daimler officials put the project on hold at the last minute, a move most analysts attributed to a weak global economy and anticipated Chrysler Group losses of nearly $1 billion for the second quarter of 2003.
Two years later, Southern Business & Development, a quarterly publication aimed at site selection executives, reported that the deal could be on again.
“If Project Pinetree is Daimler — and we really believe it is — Savannah should definitely be the front-runner,” opined Michael C. Randle, editor and publisher of the Birmingham-based publication.
“If Daimler went to Charleston after everything Savannah has invested, it would set the southern auto corridor on its ear.”
But Project Pinetree turned out to be Kia Motors, which took its investment to the other side of the state.
It would be another six years before the megasite found a worthy suitor in what is now Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems. That merged enterprise, which takes up less than 20 percent of the usable land on the 1,500-acre megasite, is expected to top out at 500 employees by the end of this year.
The property, still considered one of the most desirable industrial development sites in the Southeast, has had no shortage of lookers — from Kia and Volkswagen to Rolls Royce and the Benteler Group, maker of customized steel tubes. Officials have also declined to consider several projects that met the site’s basic criteria — one a massive, $3 billion steel mill that brought up major environmental concerns and another a rail car manufacturer that was looking for cheap labor.
