Economic development reasons why Huntsville beat out Tucson

Published on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Raytheon is building a new 70,000-square-foot, $75 million missile production facility in Huntsville, Ala. Tucson was a finalist, but didn't have what Raytheon needed and Arizona didn't give what Alabama did.

The company looked at 80 different sites over 18 months but in the end decided, "Huntsville was the most financially viable and operationally feasible solution for large missile integration," they said on their site.

There are many factors that go into a decision like this, but there are several large factors that ruled out Tucson.

Brian Hilson, president of the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce told news outlets Raytheon is to receive a $2 million cash incentive for building the facility and bringing jobs to the state. The payments will be in one $1 million and two $500,000 increments, when they meet job creation goals.

Much of Arizona's incentive programs have been placed on hold during its financial and budgetary problems.

Tucson didn't have the development ready space Raytheon needed.

The 200 acre site Raytheon will use, sits on the U.S. Army's Redstone Arsenal site. When dealing with missile production and testing there are specific requirements needed by Raytheon for a site. The company said on its website of Tucson, "the acquisition of additional land, development of site infrastructure, and road work on undeveloped land would not support current schedule requirements."

Raytheon will use the facility for final assembly and testing of Standard Missile-3 and the new Standard Missile-6. SM-3 production is expected to increase substantially in the next 10 years, and SM-6 production is expected to begin in 2010.

John Patterson, Raytheon public relations director, said Tucson didn't fall short in any way and that there is room to grow in Tucson in different ways and the company is still committed to Tucson.

But in the game of economic development, if a city doesn't land an expansion or can't help a company grow here, they've fallen short.

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