By Ashley Toland Editor

The State of the City and County addresses by Mayor Sam Jones and County Commission President Juan Chastang can be summed up in five words (or two foods) – sesame seeds and mandarin oranges.

Every year, almost comically now, grilled chicken salads are served to all of the business folk who attend the luncheon hosted by the Mobile Chamber of Commerce at the convention center.

So just as I was certain I was going to see that faithful bird breast sprawled across a bed of iceberg at the April 4 meeting, I also expected the mayor and county prez to trade their scepters for ladles and serve us up bowls of the delicious alphabet soup of economic development they’ve been spoon feeding us over the past year.

And sure enough, we got a heaping helping of EADS, RSA, EADS/CASA, CSX, MAE, and USA Cancer Research Center talk, floating in a tangy broth flavored with Austal’s high speed ferries, downtown and waterfront development, not to mention much more than a zest of a little New York Stock Exchange company called International Shipholding, all surrounded by big and hearty chunks of German steel.

Sounds mmmm, mmmm, good to me!

Especially the ingredients of the soup we already know we have on the shelves of our Port City pantry, like the Airbus Engineering Center. It has already opened at Brookley and will soon employ around 140-150 engineers.

Mobile Aerospace Engineering was awarded a large Fed Ex contract and Austal keeps pumping out those super ferries. (I accidentally typed “pimping out those super ferries” first- hee hee- could be an interesting new venture for them).

Anyway, Berg Steel is opening up in the old International Paper mill and will hire 150 employees. International Shipholding is currently setting up shop on two floors of the RSA Tower and will bring along over a 100 folks with them.

The CSX building has finally been torn down, and hopefully they will break ground soon on the proposed condo and retail development they have long envisioned for that site. The USA Cancer Research Center construction is well underway, and many new small businesses of all types have opened.

As Chamber Vice President of Economic Development Bill Sisson told me last week, “You couldn’t ask for a better time in Mobile’s economy.”

Well, unless, we get mandarin oranges and sesame seeds, Bill.

Huh?

You see those sneaky devils at The Chamber surprised everyone this year by jazzing up the salad. They dipped the chicken in sesame seeds and threw some mandarin oranges on the iceberg. I wasn’t expecting it, but I was so happy to get it.

And that’s kind of how I feel about Northrop Grumman/EADS proposal for the Air Force Tanker project. Boeing may beat us out for the project which will add another 1500 jobs to our soup pot, so I’m not going to count that chicken just yet but if it does hatch in our backyard (and we should know by the end of the summer), I’m going to be really happy- probably even a little happier than getting Asian citrus out of a can on my salad. Just a little.

And what would be the seeds o’ sesame on the chicken, you ask?

Well, if EADS/CASA is awarded an Army and Coast Guard contract to build cargo planes and if we beat out Louisiana to get the $3 billion Thyssen-Krupp steel plant in North Mobile County, which will have 2,700 high paying jobs, I’d roll myself in sesame seeds. Well, maybe not. But I’d at least order some Sesame Chicken from China Chef II.

Oranges and chicken and soup and salad and sesame seed nonsense aside, things are already hopping and even if we just get one of those potential projects, it will be so huge, not just for the people who will stamp their time cards at these facilities but for our whole community.

Sisson describes it as a sort of “ripple effect” and credits these types of industries as being the catalysts to many communities’ economies because they bring in so many new people, who will require not only the existing services but many new ones as well- from food and beverage and entertainment to legal and medical services to real estate to arts and cultural and other creative industry needs and on and on and on.

This “ripple effect” is nothing new, but some times I think we (or at least I do) forget about that part of it. It’s easy to kind of just sarcastically and/or dismissively say, “Oh great! Another plant is opening up along Chemical Alley. That’s super. How’s that going to help me exactly?”

Oh wait, it is going to benefit me. It’s going to benefit all of us. Maybe not directly but certainly indirectly.

And just imagining this kind of imminent economic explosion taking place in our beautiful city, under the canopy of our splendid oaks, along the shores of our gorgeous bay, makes me giddy with anticipation. And suddenly, it also makes me feel like I should be writing hokey brochures for our Welcome Center. Yikes!

Anyway, Mayor Jones is right. Soon, Mobile will no longer be described as the city of “perpetual potential.”

It’s our time, with or without mandarin oranges or sesame seeds. But boy, they sure would be nice.

Ashley Toland is Lagniappe editor. Contact her at ashleytoland@lagniappemobile.com.

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