The successful courtship featured helicopter and bus tours, a clandestine trip to a suburban Detroit hotel, a serendipitous labor study, a meal spectrum ranging from box lunches to Central BBQ to Gus’s Fried Chicken to finer dining, a daylong meeting at Downtown’s swanky and new Hyatt Centric Beale Street, and tons of grunt work collecting data and providing answers to questions.

And finally, after about 26 weeks, Ford Motor Co. on Aug. 31 gave a definitive “yes” to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the Memphis Regional Megasite.

But where?

Industrial recruiters across the nation had known that Ford Motor Co. intended to spend $25 billion and create thousands of jobs across multiple locations to start making electric vehicles and batteries.

Governor, execs celebrate Megasite news

But where?

No one knew.

Then in mid-February, Ford representatives contacted the office of Bob Rolfe, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development. 

“To ask what potential sites we had in our inventory that could potentially host this enormous project,” Rolfe recalled.

He referred to the $5.6 billion, 5,800-job Blue Oval City campus that Ford this week announced it will build on 3,500 acres in the Memphis Regional Megasite, 40 miles east of Memphis in Haywood County.

That February call from Ford Motor Co. to Nashville started a six-month campaign by Rolfe’s office.

His Economic & Community Development staff took the lead because the state owns the megasite.

In those early months, Rolfe’s team did not reveal the prospect’s identity to local jobs recruiters in West Tennessee, in part because Tennessee was just one of many states in the running. Rolfe felt that until Ford eliminated other states it was too early to build excitement in the West Tennessee communities. 

But from early on, Rolfe’s office teamed with local industrial recruiters like Mark Herbison at Covington-based HTL (Haywood Tipton Lauderdale) Advantage, Ted Townsend of the Greater Memphis Chamber and Jackson Chamber president Kyle Spurgeon to land the biggest industrial fish any of them had ever snagged.

Secret trip

Tennessee and Ford Motor Co. were four months into their hush-hush courtship when on June 8 Gov. Bill Lee issued a short press release about the Memphis Regional Megasite.

Governor ramps up support for W. Tenn. ‘megasite’

Never naming Ford or any other prospect, Lee stated in the release that he would push for two things: $52 million in state funds to build wastewater and water infrastructure for the megasite; and for Rolfe’s Department of Economic & Community Development to more aggressively promote the megasite to prospective employers.

Fifteen days after Lee’s office blasted out the press release, he, Rolfe and Rolfe’s team from ECD traveled to a suburban Detroit hotel — Rolfe still declines to identify the hotel — for a clandestine meeting with Ford executives.

The trip was Rolfe’s idea. 

“We invited ourselves,” Rolfe said. “If we’re saying, ‘We’re bringing the governor,’ it’s kind of hard (for Ford) to say, ‘don’t bother.’”

Suburbs could become growth point with proximity to proposed Ford plans

“We took the governor to Detroit,” Rolfe said. “And we met in Detroit at a hotel to keep this ultra-confidential. Met with the Ford executive team. We were in the finals,” he said, referring to Ford’s process of elimination. 

In that hotel conference room, the Tennesseans made their pitch for their state and the Memphis Regional Megasite.

Afterward, Rolfe recalled, “We did feel we had successfully made our case for why Tennessee, why the megasite, why West Tennessee.”

‘Time stood still’

A half-year after Ford representatives first contacted the state in February, the phone and Zoom calls carried monumentally good news.

Townsend of the Greater Memphis Chamber was walking Downtown on Monroe toward his residence on Friday evening, Sept. 24, when his cell phone rang and displayed a Michigan area code.

“Of course, I answered it,” Townsend said. “I stood in the lobby of my building. I didn’t even want to get into the elevator. I couldn’t quite process exactly what I was hearing. And I didn’t want to lose the call. Time stood still for me.”

Herbison was driving down Tenn. 14 from his HTL Advantage office in Covington to his home in Shelby County when his phone rang. Calling was Chassen Haynes, head of business development for the state Department of Economic & Community Development.

“He said, ‘It looks like we’re going to announce this thing next week,” Herbison recalled. “I just told him I couldn’t believe it. ‘Really? Are you serious?’” Herbison responded. 

“It’s what I’ve been dreaming of. It’s why I took this job. I wanted to be on the team that brought a car plant to the megasite,” Herbison said.

Rolfe had received the profound news 24 days earlier, on Aug. 31, in a Zoom call that involved Lee and Ford representatives. Rolfe logged into the video call from his office. Lee plugged in from his office or residence. 

Scaling up Ford workforce will involve high schools, every college in area

“We got that verbal assurance,” Rolfe recalled of the Zoom call.

“We were ecstatic and at the same time incredibly humbled,” Rolfe said. 

“And then, at the same time as that set in, (the realization of) the enormous task in front of us because this is going to require a heavy lift by a whole host of commissioners across Gov. Lee’s cabinet.” 

Rolfe referred to the involvement of the Department of Transportation to improve roads, of the departments of Environment and Conservation and Commerce & Insurance to review applications and issue permits, Finance & Administration to provide much of the state’s half-billion dollars of incentives, the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and Board of Regents to stand up vocational training at the megasite.

A timely labor study

HTL Advantage is an economic development organization representing Haywood, Tipton and Lauderdale counties. Herbison, a former lead recruiter for the Greater Memphis Chamber, took over HTL Advantage two years ago. 

Soon after, he commissioned an in-depth labor study for his three-county area. It would be information he could show industrial prospects.

The long drive to making cars closer to Memphis

And last year, Herbison added another layer to the data, commissioning a $25,000, 80-page study of the labor capacity within 45- and 90-minute drive times of the state-owned Memphis Regional Megasite in Haywood County.

The consultant completed the study last fall; the timing could hardly have been better. 

The research concluded that 185,000 people with such skill sets as “team assemblers” or “tire builders” — qualifying them to work in an auto plant — live in the surrounding area, and nearly 200,000 people with skills applicable to a battery-making plant live in the area, Herbison said. 

“Literally, a couple or three or four months later this project came along,” Herbison said of the day in February or March when state economic development officials emailed him for information to provide to a new industrial prospect involving a large development.

“It’s like a godsend,” he said of the study.

In the succeeding months, Herbison participated in about 20 meetings and field trips with representatives of Ford and battery-maker SK Innovation. That work included bus and even helicopter tours of the area and neighborhoods, dinner at places like Central BBQ and Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken as well as box lunches, and a daylong meeting at Downtown’s new Hyatt Centric hotel to go over the area’s workforce profile, Herbison said.

‘This feels like a different project’

Townsend and the Greater Memphis Chamber also started gathering and providing information for the effort starting in late winter.

But not until August would even Townsend realize the magnitude of this potential development.

“In June, I received a call from the commissioner (Rolfe) to hop on a virtual event to present the community,” Townsend recalled. “It was going to be Memphis, Jackson and the region surrounding the megasite, which is represented by Mark Herbison at HTL Advantage…

“It was a beautiful thing to watch, how our organizations came together to represent all of our communities. I would say between June and August, I realized that, man, this feels like a different project,” Townsend said.

Townsend discerned clues about the project’s mammoth scale just from the prospect’s keen interest in the local workforce. 

“This to me sounded like a company or companies that were looking to invest in place and people,” he said. “Not that they all don’t. But at the scale we were understanding, that to me felt like this is bigger than anything I’ve ever worked.

Governor wants special session to approve incentives for Ford

“As they navigated their way and conducted some onsite visits, that’s when this really became palpable. That this could be a very special moment for all of us,” Townsend said.