CEO of the North Alabama Industrial Development Association

Tate Godfrey is president and CEO of the North Alabama Industrial Development Association.  His organization works with local economic development agencies across a 13-county region to recruit industry and enhance the quality of life in northern Alabama, with special emphasis on improving employment opportunities for the region’s young people.  Godfrey has more than 25 years of experience in economic development, commercial and industrial real estate development, and land planning.  A Certified Economic Developer (CEcD), Godfrey has worked with hundreds of firms worldwide in their location decision process.

Question:

How do you expect residents and businesses in North Alabama to benefit from Norfolk Southern’s Birmingham Regional Intermodal Facility, which is planned as part of the railroad’s Crescent Corridor improvements?

Answer:

Norfolk Southern has been an important partner for all of the economic development community in Alabama. Our strategy is to try to promote the state of Alabama first, and then obviously we want to get as much economic development and new jobs investment as possible in our region. Everybody in economic development is always looking for a competitive edge, and having something like this intermodal facility is absolutely an important business recruiting tool for us.

Historically, we’ve been an area that is a good fit for manufacturing. We already have a lot of important customers to Norfolk Southern in our region. Any company in Alabama that’s shipping across Norfolk Southern’s rail system is going to benefit from the increased capacity and reduction in shipping time that the Crescent Corridor is going to offer, so we’re completely behind those efforts.

Question:

What do you view as the primary public benefits to be derived from improvements to the Crescent Corridor in Alabama, and do you think it makes sense to invest public dollars in increasing freight rail capacity on the corridor?

Answer:

I think it’s a testament to the strength of the project that Norfolk Southern was the largest recipient of the recent federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants – $105 million to be used between the Birmingham and Memphis intermodal facilities planned for the corridor. That was a competitive grant process, so the U.S. Department of Transportation obviously saw the merits of improved infrastructure in terms of rail access and intermodal capacity, and also the reduction of truck traffic on our interstates. If we can remove some of the trucks that certainly has a ripple effect benefit to the state, where we don’t have to spend money or perhaps delay expenditures on roadway expansion and maintenance. We also can hold down congestion on the roadways. I think that is a tremendous and efficient use of public dollars. Everybody benefits.

From a competitive sense in the transportation sector, trucking companies pay taxes on roads, but it’s a little different animal when you use primarily public dollars to widen and increase highway capacity. Traditionally, the Class 1 railroads have been responsible for paying all their own capital improvements, especially in recent memory, so the idea of spending public funds to enhance freight rail capacity is certainly a fair way to look at things.

Alabama certainly has industries important to us that aren’t traditional rail users, such as biotechnology, aerospace, and defense, but we still are heavily dependent on manufacturing and industry that depend on rail. The American South and Alabama love manufacturing and we work hard to develop that. That makes rail very important to us and our economy.