One of the biggest announcements of Mississippi’s 2025 economic development year could come in the first quarter.
The project, which could be valued at more than $1 billion, is expected to take place in Rankin County, where significant development is expected to occur in 2025 throughout the year.
“We obviously can’t talk about the details, but we expect a big announcement this year,” Regina Todd, managing partner of Rankin First, told the Clarion Ledger. “I think it could happen as early as the first quarter of the year.”
This follows announcement last week that Dallas-based Compass Datacenters, a multinational data center developer, is locating its next hyperscale data center campus in Meridian at a reported cost of $10 billion.
Last year, it was announced that Amazon Web Services would occupy two Madison County sites for a historic construction of large-scale development centers at a cost of $10 billion.
While Rankin County’s upcoming announcement won’t quite hit the $10 billion mark, it will highlight another billion-dollar-plus economic development milestone.
“You know, one thing that made me want to work in Rankin County, where I’m from, is that there is a very diverse industrial base,” said Todd, who worked at the Mississippi Development Authority before moving to Rankin. First of all. “Every community in Rankin County is growing. It’s not just Brandon or Flowood. There’s different growth everywhere.”
In 2024, Rankin County experienced significant growth and finished the year with the lowest unemployment rate in the state of Mississippi.
The company continues to build on the region’s expanding health care industry, including Mississippi Sports Medicine, Jackson Heart and others.
Historically, 80% of new business in Rankin County comes from existing customers and ensuring existing businesses and businesses have the ability to grow and expand.
“We have several industries and businesses that continue to grow in the county,” Todd said. “A lot of times these kinds of stories don’t get aired. Sometimes they don’t even announce them because they don’t want their competitors to know what they’re doing.”
She mentioned the ongoing expansion at Siemens in Richland for additional manufacturing space that will result in the creation of more than 100 new jobs in the coming year.
Multicraft International in Pelahatchie is growing and will soon create 35 new jobs.
Additionally, the Mississippi National Guard recently completed construction of a $24 million intermodal repair facility in Rankin County.
Over the past 18 months, the healthcare industry has also seen expansion, including Mississippi Sports Medicine, Jackson Heart and others.
Exponential growth is expected along the East Metro Parkway, which extends from Lakeland Drive in Flowood to Interstate-20 in Pearl, which opened in December 2023.
Quick decisions
“So one thing we’ve worked on over the years is continuing to grow our industrial sites,” Todd said. “Time and cost are things these prospects are looking at. They want to know how quickly they can go down. They want to know how quickly they can start building. We need to make sure all the infrastructure is in place.”
Currently, Todd said the county is in the process of extending water and sewer to the rail sites for a possible rail project in the near future that could also lead to a manufacturing warehousing project.
She said the county was able to acquire 200 acres of land for industrial projects, which would attract a distribution-type plant with a specific building in a Rankin County industrial park.
“We are working, slowly but surely, to get everything ready,” Todd said.
Ross Reily is a writer for the Clarion Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at rreily@gannett.com or 601-573-2952. You can follow him on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter @GreenOkra1.