Gov. Tate Reeves says Mississippi must be better than other states in economic development

This is the first of two stories from an exclusive interview with Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves on the successes of the state's economic development strategy and where he sees the state going into the future.

Over the course of the last couple of years, Mississippi has had an assortment of riches from a standpoint of economic development.

The list is long and there are a lot of zeros at the end of all of the price tags.

There's the billion dollar steel plant in the Golden Triangle.

There's the billion dollar EV battery plant in Marshall County.

In January 2024 Amazon Web Services made waves, announcing it will occupy two Madison County locations for a historic buildout of hyperscale development centers.

Everyone knew it was a big deal when Mississippi lawmakers completed the $259 million incentive package for the Amazon Web Services' $10 billion project in Canton and Madison County.  That project could be worth much more than $10 billion.

Finally, Dallas-based Compass Datacenters announced this year its next hyperscale data center campus in Meridian, which will consist of eight data centers that will be constructed over an eight-year period. That project represents an investment of $10 billion. 

The common denominator in all of those projects was the praise that the companies heaped on the state of Mississippi, the Mississippi Development Authority and Gov. Tate Reeves for the ease in which they were all able to work to get things done.

In the case of Data Compucenters, CEO A.J. Byers said that the economic development strategy of Mississippi is the reason his company is building its data center campus in Mississippi.

"We were able to go from an idea to ground breaking in what we would consider record time," Byers said.

Many of the larger cities in the nation, Byers said at the time, are becoming more difficult to work with in terms of locating data centers.

In an exclusive interview with Reeves last week, the governor told the Clarion Ledger that because of its history in economic development, Mississippi has been in the position of playing catch-up to a degree to make things happen.

But he is quick to point out that the success of the last couple of years is as much about Bill Cork at the MDA and Courtney Taylor at Accelerate Mississippi and everyone in between as it is with him.

"All of this is a recognition that we have to work harder than anyone else to get the same results as them because we have a history to overcome, and that history has a myriad of issues, but we recognize that we have to work harder, and we also recognize that we have to remove speed bumps in the way to success. That's just the approach we take," Reeves said."

Reeves noted the work of Cork who over the last two weeks has been in Asia working on potential economic development projects, at Orlando, Florida for a site selection conference and finally in California for a Nvidia conference in which CEO Jensen Huang announced it will open a quantum computing research lab in Boston, where it plans to collaborate with scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"That speech literally drove the market to positive ground," Reeves said. "So, that is a recognition of what we have to do to win projects, and it is more than what others might have to do. We have had incredible success because we have been willing to work at it."

In the beginning ...

Reeves said that after he was elected to his first term in 2020, he, Cork and his team made a concerted effort to meet with as many site selectors around the country and around the globe as humanly possible.

"Those first initial meetings were about building relationships, but more importantly, it was about listening and finding out what we need to do better," Reeves said.

The three areas that needed to be addressed centered around workforce development, site development and speed to market.

"I believe we have gotten those three things right, which allows our work ethic and how hard we work to lead us to success because we have gotten those three things right," Reeves said.

From a workforce development aspect, Reeves' team worked with the legislature to create Accelerate Mississippi, which is a private sector-led organization in which Reeves makes appointments to the executive board.

Reeves notes that five years ago Site Selection Magazine ranked Mississippi last in the Southern region in workforce development. In its latest rankings the state has moved up to No. 4, behind Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee and ahead of Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky and Oklahoma.

Site development

On the site development front, Reeves said there just weren't enough places for business to locate when he first got into office for major economic development projects.

"I have not always been a proponent of 'build it and they will come,' and I am still not. However, when you understand what the marketplace is looking for and you are willing to invest assets and resources to doing what government is supposed to do ... our state and any other state goes to work to put that in place," Reeves said. "The problem with that is that it takes three or four years."

So, Reeves and his team made a conscious decision to start investing in sites that the state could get ready as quickly as possible.

"The directive I gave Bill is I want 30 sites in around the state in every region of the state that are literally shovel ready," Reeves said.

That came to fruition as multiple megasites came online in the last several years. One in Madison County was virtually ready when AWS came calling. Because of the work already done, when AWS wanted more availability for water, Mississippi was in a position to provide it.

"Other economic development projects don't need the amount of water that hyperscale data centers need," Reeves said. "So, we had to make some upgrades. Those upgrades took a matter of months, not 4 or 5 years or we never would have won that project."

In the last five years, Mississippi has spent more than $140 million in site development, which has paid off in billions of dollars of projects that have come to the state.

Now, the challenge is to keep providing land that is shovel ready. Now that AWS is building in Madison County, the race is on for Joey Deason at Madison County Economic Development Authority or Joe Max Higgins at the Golden Triangle LINK to get another megasite ready after landing the steel plant.

"We want to be in the business of economic development, and if we don't have readily available sites, you are not in the business of economic development," Reeves said. "You may be in the sales business, you may be in the talking to business, but you aren't in the business of economic development. Fortunately, Joey understands that, and we will help with site development (on the next land identified.)."

Speed to market

The last leg on the stool is speed to market.

The common denominator that both AWS and Compass have talked about is the ability of the state's energy companies to deliver at a breakneck speed. In the case of Compass, it has been Mississippi Power, but for AWS, at least at the Madison campuses, it has been Entergy.

“Since meeting the Compass Datacenter folks in February 2024, it has been one exciting experience," Bill Hannah, East Mississippi Business Development Corporation president previously told the Clarion Ledger. "Mississippi Power’s investment in a substation for the I-20/59 Industrial Park, along with Lauderdale County’s ability to work with the Mississippi Legislature for a $4 million site grant, an additional MDA site grant and the city of Meridian’s water/sewer investment years ago, truly made this site a speed to market option for Compass."

Kerry Person, vice president of AWS Data Center Planning, told the Clarion Ledger almost the exact same thing.

"I have nothing but positive things to say about (Entergy CEO) Haley (Fisackerly) and his team," Person said. "We had multiple meetings, dinners and meals with Haley's team (recently). They have been a great partner for us. They have moved at our speed, which is very nice from an energy and utility standpoint. We don't see that everywhere in the country. They have been willing to take some risks on some handshakes and with trust. We have made some great commitments with them. They have been a fantastic partner to get this done."

That has led Person to promise there is more to come down the road for AWS and Mississippi.

One instance where speed to market worked against Mississippi was along the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg.

There is a site there where the permitting is done now, but wasn't done when a steel company wanted to locate there. The company chose Arkansas instead.

"They just didn't know if it was going to take three month or three years," Reeves said. "That uncertainty made it more difficult for us. We wiped that off the table and have the permitting done through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Now, we can sell that site, and we are working toward that. So, that shows that speed to market is what companies are looking for."

Tax incentives

Another part of the process is the legislature being able to provide incentives through tax breaks to companies wanting to come to Mississippi.

Reeves says that while that is still a part of the process, it is not the most important part.

"We run (the numbers) on every project, and if it is not a good deal for the state, I am willing to say no. I am willing to walk away," Reeves said. "Mississippi had a reputation that we would buy projects, which was good for some people, but I would argue that the ones that are out looking for a big incentive package are not really the partners that you want. We no longer have that reputation around the country."