Date:         Mon, 10 Apr 95 22:25:07 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: Mercedes van plant in Tuscaloosa?/f

On Mon, 10 Apr 95 19:51:06 CDT Alistair Bell said:
>What about that, Joel!?

well, what about what? :)  they are building the plant, spending lots and
lots of alabama taxpayers money preparing the site and adding a highway
cloverleaf interchange on the interstate. some buildings are already up and
being completed.

the funniest thing to all us locals is watching the germans eating
bar-b-cue with a knife and fork. :)  <it takes a while for them to learn
how to do it "properly">

>at the brand-new assembly site near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will start in

actually, the site is located IN the town of Vance, AL. but Vance was very
much ignored by the state and county and Tuscaloosa and Birmingham governments
as they tripped all over each other trying to give more and more money and
credits to MB. in five years, the town of Vance will not exist. :( already
the property values around there have gone up over double in most cases and
much higher in others.

>marketing director promised former Alabama governor Jim Folsom that the
>first AAV off the line will be badged the Folsom.

yup. and somehow, magically, just out of the blue, the ex-governor (who got
voted out of office, after his administration "gave" Mercedes nearly $300
million in subsidies, tax credits, special considerations, etc.) got a
big boy Mercedes sedan to use as a state car. ;)

the current governor is hemming and hawing about a due payment of $42 million
... which the state is supposed to pay to Mercedes for "expenditures" on
site preparation. hell, the ex-governor even tried to get the National Guard
to prep the site with their engineer battalions. basically a good idea ...
cause the engineers rarely get a chance to do lots of indiscriminate damage
to the environment without a lot of folks yelling their heads off. ;) good
training for the soldiers, you see. but since the NG is also partly Federal,
it got really messy legally and it was called off quickly.

typical southern politics. Huey Long is not dead. ;)

joel