The corridor

According to Site Selection Magazine, two of the 10 largest industrial capital projects in development in Ohio are in this area. The list shows Sun Coke at Haverhill, Ohio, as being the fourth-largest at $225 million and the proposed Buckeye Ethanol plant at South Point, Ohio, as the sixth-largest at $150 million.

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Here is one part of the Q & A that the magazine had with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland:

SS: How can Ohio change the perception of national site selectors who may still see Ohio as a Rust Belt State?
GOV. STRICKLAND: We need to understand the destructive nature of self- fulfilling prophecy. We need to focus on our strengths rather than our past. We need to develop a new and stronger Ohio brand. It must reflect a genuine change of attitude on the part of the business and political leadership in Ohio.

I have commented before about Huntington's inability to look to the future. It chooses to complain about the past. Mention any thing remotely associated with change in Huntington and people will start griping about the mall or the routing of Interstate 64. This town just cannot look ahead. Too many people are afraid of letting go of the past. The mall and the interstate are where they are. Live with it.

Likewise, too many West Virginians, it seems, derive their identity from the past and not the present or the future. I didn't see so much of that in southern Ohio, where I grew up. Granted, southern Ohio didn't have nearly as colorful a past as southern West Virginia did, but people didn't base what they were on who did what a hundred years ago.

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Back to the topic at hand, the corridor from South Point, Ohio, to Wheelersburg, Ohio, could see some significant industrial investment in the coming decade. We could have a similar corridor between Lesage and Point Pleasant, W.Va., but that region lacks some of the utilities you find in the one in Ohio. People talk about the great sites up there, but few people seem to do anything to improve them.

I'm glad the hazmat incinerator and the pulp mill didn't go up there. We don't need that kind of "development." There are clean industries that could use the sites in that area. But there's no desire on the part of the leadership of this area to see that something happens. Maybe it's because the WV corridor crosses too many political jurisdictions -- legislative, congressional, county. But that's true in Ohio, too, but the Lawrence and Scioto county people manage to work together.

So while the Ohio corridor could land a second power plant and the ethanol plant to go with the second battery of coke ovens at Sun Coke, the Route 2 corridor in West Virginia doesn't even get lip service.