Pick Me! Recruitment Insights From Mississippi’s $10 Billion AWS Investment

Each season, we hear from a community who recently won a significant project. On this Pick Me! episode, Joey Deason, Executive Director of the Madison County Economic Development Authority in Mississippi, joins us to talk about landing a $10 billion investment from Amazon Web Services.

 

At Livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs.

Be sure to subscribe so you’re alerted when we release new episodes. Learn more about us at LivabilityMedia.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email host Amanda Ellis at [e-mail].

Inside America’s Best Cities is produced by SpeakEasy Productions.

 

Episode Transcript

Joey [00:00:07]: This wasn't AWS's first rodeo. They know how to build data centers. I think to this scale was a new rodeo, and they were figuring it out as we went along, and we were able to work as a partner with them. Electricity. Product meaning land, water, gas, sewer. And then third and last was the labor. Without the labor, you can't put this together. But when you have an economic engine as large as AWS, a lot of it comes a lot easier. (00:00):
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Amanda [00:00:43]: That's the voice of Joey Deason, executive director of the Madison County Economic Development Authority in Mississippi. Every season, we hear from a community who recently landed a big economic development win. And today, Joey is here to share about a huge investment in Madison County, Mississippi. A $10 billion investment, to be exact, from AWS, Amazon Web Services. You can learn more about this podcast at livabilitymedia.com, and with that, let's jump in. Welcome, Joey, to Inside America's Best Cities. You sound like a very busy beast, so we're really excited we were able to get on your schedule and have you. (00:01):
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Joey [00:01:23]: Thank you, Amanda. I appreciate the opportunity. (00:02):
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Amanda [00:01:27]: We're going to be talking about the big AWS project that you all have landed in your state and in your region, which I'm really excited to hear more detail about. Can you kick us off by just telling us a little more about that in a nutshell? In case people don't know all the details, the big highlights, and why this is such a big deal for you all, it seems like it's going to have a really huge economic impact. (00:03):
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Joey [00:01:48]: Well, obviously, anytime you announce a $10 billion deal, it does have a huge economic impact. It's huge. It's huge. But one of the factors that most people didn't realize is that Mississippi was even in play for this type of project, because Mississippi is typically known as a manufacturing state. So we sort of took the community and the market by surprise when we announced a $10 billion hyperscale data center over two campuses here in Madison County, Mississippi, that will employ a minimum of 1,000 people. And it took the market by surprise. If you're sitting at the Mississippi Development Authority today, you probably have quite a few projects that are chasing Mississippi at the moment for additional data centers because of this announcement. (00:04):
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Amanda [00:02:43]: That's a big deal. Talk me through… Did the team working to land this do anything out of the ordinary that you Feel like, sealed the deal. Was there anything out of the ordinary about site selection? I know data centers in particular can have some really unique needs. Anything unusual about this? (00:05):
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Joey [00:03:00]: Well, first of all, this process started five years ago, November of 2019. And that's when I had my very first visit to Seattle to the AWS headquarters. Now, prior to that, we were exchanging some emails back and forth, but it was our utility partner that had actually been out in front of the local economic development and the state economic development agency working this project directly with AWS. So they were in it for about six years. We came in at five years. And to be honest with you, when we made our trips out to Seattle at that time, there wasn't a project. It was more or less… meet, greet, what is your product? What do you have? And when you talk, these hyperscale data centers. Obviously, power, electricity and water are the two biggest drivers in the past, from my understanding, because data centers aren't an old technology. They're fairly new in the marketplace. They've been around, but it's fairly new. But back when they originally began building data centers, they would build one data center, and then they may build another data center. And then guess what, Google, Meta, Facebook, everyone would start building data centers around that single data center. Then all of a sudden, you drove up the cost of power, you drove up the cost of land, and you wound up with a cluster of data centers. But it was a lot of different Alphabet companies that were there. So I think when we announced two campuses, 1750 acres, a minimum of $10 billion there, again, it caught the market by surprise. And everyone took a look at Mississippi at that point, and especially at Madison County, because you can have all the power that you need, but if you don't have the product and you don't have all the right cylinders firing at the exact same time, then that's an issue and a problem. (00:06):
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Amanda [00:05:05]: Yes, you talked a little bit about the timeline already that this kind of started around five years ago. What else can you share about how that moved along and kind of what the significant benchmarks were? (00:07):
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Joey [00:05:16]: Well, In November of 2022, we knew at that point that there was a potential of a project. We started exchanging a lot more information. And Amanda, to be honest with you, we've exchanged 10,000 emails since 2019. Okay, I keep a folder. 10,000 emails. (00:08):
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Amanda [00:05:37]: Oh, my gosh. (00:09):
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Joey [00:05:39]: But in November of 2022, we started getting a little more interest. And the exact words- we got a call and we said, “We have a whale on the line.” And I said, “A what? A whale?” And they said, “Yeah, we've got a large customer on the line, we've got some deadlines, and we need to move fast.” So, May of 2023 was the exact first visit that we had on the site. And then shortly following that, we were under construction on a substation in September of 23, and we hadn't even passed legislation yet. So, you'd mentioned, what are some of those things that put you in the driver's seat that put you ahead that nobody else had probably done before? When we got the call that we had been chosen, we all sat down. And when I say we, that's MCEDA, the Madison County Economic Development Authority. That is Entergy, and that was AWS. And we're sitting at a table. AWS says, look, we've got to meet our deadlines. We've got to have a substation pad ready to build a substation by January of 24. Entergy looked at AWS, I looked at AWS, and they all said, “We can't build a substation pad that quickly.” And AWS said, “Well, that's an issue, that's a problem.” And I let them talk back and forth just a while longer. Then I finally said, “Well, look, can MCEDA, our organization, which is a small organization, build the substation pad for you?” Because Entergy said for them to build that substation, it would probably take about 10 months or 11 months. And that was unfeasible and it wasn't going to work. Well, AWS looked at me and said, “Well, can you build it?” And I said, “Obviously we can build it.” I said, “Will you pay for it?” And they said, “Yes, we'll pay for it.” So we developed a relationship of actually constructing the pads through AWS long before the legislation was ever even passed. And we got so good at that relationship. They asked us to build some of their data center pads. Then they asked us to build more substations, then they asked us to build more data center pads. And to date, it's about $175 million worth of construction that has been funneled from AWS directly through our organization to speed the market, to assist them to meet their deadlines. (00:10):
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Amanda [00:08:11]: That's pretty cool and a little bit different order of doing things, but it definitely worked out in the end. Can you remind our listeners the job numbers associated with this? (00:11):
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Joey [00:08:16]: It's 1000, and that's a very conservative number. And it's the same way with the investment number. It's $10 billion. But those are very conservative numbers. That's what we agreed to with AWS and agreed to with the state of Mississippi that we would publicly put out there. But privately we all understand that the investment and the jobs are going to be much greater than that. (00:12):
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Amanda [00:08:40]: Yeah. Was that a big piece? I know usually that's a big piece when these conversations are happening, the workforce part. But it sounds like some of the others you just described maybe were at the forefront. But can you talk about that piece a little bit like workforce making sure you're prepared for that and how that part of the conversation went? (00:13):
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Joey [00:08:56]: There were numerous things that had to occur. First of all, this wasn't AWS's first rodeo. They know how to build data centers, I think to this scale was a new rodeo and they were figuring it out as we went along and we were able to work as a partner with them. Electricity. You had to have product. Product meaning land, water, gas, sewer, all the infrastructure that was required. And then third and last was the labor. Without the labor, you can't put this together. But when you have an economic engine as large as AWS, a lot of it comes a lot easier. I don't care if you're in Nashville, Austin, LA, New York, Detroit, or Orlando. Labor's an issue everywhere. Now, if you would have announced a 10,000 person project here in Madison County, we could have not supplied the labor for that. We don't have the workforce. We literally have about 115,000 here in the county. And 600,000 is the population in the Jackson metro area. But when you're talking only 1,000 jobs, that's easy to maintain. As a matter of fact, the buildings are under construction now and there's a timeline for those to those buildings to come online. First quarter of 25, first quarter of 26 and first quarter of 27. And they've already hired 100 people at this point, so it hasn't been an issue. We're working directly with the human resource people at AWS and these are their words, they're not mine, that they find it very refreshing. There's a diverse talent workforce here and they were very surprised at the local talent that they've been able to locate just locally and to bring in. Because AWS is such a large enterprise and a large company. When they have these job postings, I believe they post internal as well as external. So you may have people that lived in Mississippi that moved to Seattle that want to move back. And we've seen that as well. (00:14):
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Amanda [00:11:09]: Very cool. Yeah, that makes sense what you're saying. I guess the thousand is not as big a number as sometimes goes along with things with such a big investment number. So that makes sense. It's a lot more manageable and gives them a lot of options, which is awesome. I know that Madison County in general, from what I was researching, has had a decent bit of growth in the last decade or so. I think around 15% was a number I had read. Why do you think that is? (00:15):
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Joey [00:11:35]: It goes back to strategic planning and having a community that works together. We actually have five municipalities. There's the city of Ridgeland, the city of Madison, the city of Gluckstadt, the City of Canton, and the City of Flora. And each have their own unique identity. But the one thing that's a common thread through all of them is the quality of life, the safety, the security, the residential, the museums, the restaurants. And we're adjacent to a 33,000-acre reservoir which is perfect for boating, fishing, swimming, all those activities. And we are traversed with a federal parkway called the Natchez Trace Parkway, which runs from Natchez, Mississippi all the way to Nashville. And so there's biking, hiking, running. It's a hidden gem. (00:16):
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Amanda [00:12:30]: Well, and I love seeing the growth framed with a little bit longer time period because I feel like so many groups are framing that as like, since the pandemic, or in the last five years. And it seems like for you, all that really extends outside of that, which is really cool. (00:17):
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Joey [00:12:44]: Well, there's one interesting factoid that people don't realize about Madison County and specifically here in Mississippi. There's a data factor called per capita income. Per capita income is the amount of wealth in a community divided by the total number of citizens. Madison County, out of 3,133 counties in the U.S… ranks in the top 5%. So when you look at those numbers, it really is a hidden gem insomuch that we had AWS here last week and we had a couple of their executives with us and we were driving through the city of Madison, and she just stopped me and said, “Joey, you've never carried me through this part of the city before. I think I'm in a Hallmark movie.” And it sort of caught me by surprise. But yeah, we typically travel the interstate. We're in a hurry, we're going to site. But we had the opportunity to go through a little part of the town in the community and she fell in love and she said, “Look, when I come back, we're going to take a whole day and we're going to shop these- We're going to get on these streets and we're going to shop all of these shops that are local here.” So very refreshing. (00:18):
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Amanda [00:13:59]: You didn't know you were going to be the star of a Hallmark movie. I guess you never know what's going to happen in a day in our field. (00:19):
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Joey [00:14:05]: Who knows? Who knows? (00:20):
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Amanda [00:14:07]: So good. Any advice, Joey, you'd like to leave our listeners with? Of course, you know, we're all looking for these moments and landing these big projects. Any thoughts there? (00:21):
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Joey [00:14:19]: The first thing I would say is once you figure out who you want to be, and that's important because some communities don't want a steel mill. They don't want a chicken plant. They want a specific industry. Okay. And you've got to stay true to that vision, and you got to make sure your leaders believe in that vision. Because what will happen nine out of nine times is that win gets further and further apart. And then people get antsy and they need a project win because they feel like they're under pressure. And then a project will approach a community and it won't be the right fit and you're afraid to say no and you take a wrong direction. So don't be afraid to say no to the wrong project. Stay true to who you want to be, and at the end of the day, make sure your leadership are kept informed. And that includes the citizens as well. You need to inform all of those and you gotta keep everybody believing and pulling in the same direction. (00:22):
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Amanda [00:15:31]: Some good life advice there, too, I think intentional about what you're gonna say yes to. I like it. Well, Joey, we always close with a fun question. I know we've talked about already some of the great things about your area. But for you personally, if someone were visiting for the first time, what do you think would be the main bucket list item they should make sure to do? (00:23):
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Joey [00:15:52]: Well, I would start with restaurants, and we've got some very unique restaurants as well. When you deal with site consultants and when these companies come in, they actually get tired of eating steak and potatoes because everybody wants to take you to their favorite steak place. But probably on the top of my bucket list would be a little hidden jewel called the Jackson Yacht Club, which is on the reservoir. It's got a 1970s decor, but the service is outstanding. And you can't beat the view because you're sitting up on a giant hill and you're overlooking 33,000 acres of a reservoir. And it's truly unique. (00:24):
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Amanda [00:16:35]: Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Joey. I know our listeners will be super excited to hear about this big win that you've had in your community and appreciate your time so much. (00:25):
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Joey [00:16:44]: Thanks Amanda. Appreciate it. (00:26):
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Amanda [00:16:51]: Thanks for listening to the Livability podcast, where we take you inside America's best cities. At livability, we highlight the unsung awesomeness of small and mid-sized cities across the country. We also partner with communities to reach their target companies and potential residents through digital content and print magazine programs. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow rate and review this show. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can also learn more about [e-mail]. have an idea for an upcoming episode? Email me at a ellisivability.com until next time. From livability, I'm Amanda Ellis, sharing the stories of America's most promising places. (00:27):
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