Huntsville enters another space race

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Huntsville
Huntsville has racked up an impressive series of big business announcements in the past few years. [Photo Credit: iStock]

There’s another space race in the Rocket City — the race for space.

In 1969, local NASA engineers made history by putting the first man on the moon. Today, Huntsville commercial real estate brokers are pioneering the way for a bevy of businesses.

Over the past 50 years, two competitors in particular — Washington, D.C., and California’s Silicon Valley — have often edged the city out in the ferocious race to attract big business.

The proximity to the FBI, Congress and Maryland’s Andrews Air Force Base made D.C. an attractive suitor for a multitude of companies searching for industrial properties, and California’s Midas touch in the renowned Silicon Valley had businesses swarming like flies in the coastal community.

However, as property prices continue to climb nationwide, minimum wages rise rapidly and President Trump’s impending tax implications become even more unclear, Huntsville has become an “it market” for companies seeking refuge from a series of suffocating expenses.

Over the last 24 months, Huntsville has become a regular headliner in national news, attracting a slew of new companies.

In 2016, Polaris rolled into the Rocket City, investing more than $142 million in the area and employing more than 1,700 skilled and unskilled workers. Fast forward a year, and the investment in Huntsville’s Cummings Research Park skyrocketed. A flood of announcements saturated local and national news, including an Aerojet Rocketdyne expansion that would bring 800 jobs and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin planning to invest $200 million in a rocket engine factory.

That number is soon to surge even further with Toyota’s and Mazda’s recent announcement that they will build a $1.6 billion joint assembly plant off Greenbrier Road.

Republished with permission from the Alabama NewsCenter.