Fresh Loaf

Environmentally-friendly construction product maker GreenTech is coming to Coffee County! And it’s bringing jobs, people! Wonderful, delicious jobs.

From Gov. Sonny Perdue’s offfice:

Governor Sonny Perdue today announced that environmentally-friendly construction product maker GreenTech Manufacturing plans to locate a new facility in Douglas. The company will create 320 jobs and invest more than $20 million in a manufacturing and distribution facility.

…(Ed. This is the part where we skip Perdue’s quote about “moving forward,” “real solutions,” “dynamic synergy,” etc.)

GreenTech Manufacturing has contracted a 103,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution center located on nine acres in Douglas’s Southwest Industrial Park. GreenTech is wholly owned by Gulf Coast Arms, a nonprofit trust incorporated in Texas, whose mission is to foster sustainability and affordability solutions across the country and abroad.

GreenTech uses the innovative Powder Impression Molding (PIM) system to produce stronger-than-steel, lightweight construction products using up to 95 percent recycled materials from single-stream solid waste sources. The result is an environmentally sustainable, efficient and cost-effective alternative to traditional construction products such as metal, wood, concrete and fiberglass.

Jobs! Full release after the jump.

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The big news today among the state’s go-go economic boosters is that the University of Georgia may land the new “National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility,” a $500 million project of the Department of Fatherland … er, Homeland Security.

Nary a word of skepticism in Atlanta’s Daily of Depleted Circulation that there is more to this top-secret “bio-safety level 4” lab – think of The Andromeda Strain – than “defense.” Hint: We’re talking Pentagon and Bush administration, so you can bet they’ll be cooking up nasty new bugs at UGA. Maybe the folks in Athens want a big target painted on the town. For my money, I’d say, NIMBY.

But even if making the list of five finalists for the Homeland Security lab is a feather in Georgia’s cap, the real economic development news for the state is downright dismal.

Forbes magazine’s second annual ranking of “The Best States for Business” shows Georgia tumbling from a respectable No. 10 spot to a mediocre No. 15. Considering the extraordinary lengths state officials go to – and the amount of your money they’re willing to spend – in order to attract businesses, that’s an “F” on the report card.

Five regional rivals – Virginia (No. 1), North Carolina (No. 3), Texas (No. 4), Florida (No. 7) and Tennessee (No. 13) – topped Georgia on Forbes’ list.

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