While pockets of growth exist in this region, overall it looks like a year of slow growth or declining economic conditions for Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee.
However, several large projects began construction this year. According to McGraw-Hill Construction, the largest projects that broke ground in the region in 2008 were the 6.6 million square-foot ThyssenKrupp
steel processing
facility in Calvert, Ala.; a 1.1-million-square-foot hospital in Lexington, Ky.; the 897,000-square-foot Human Resource Center of Excellence in Fort Knox, Ky.; a 600,000-square-foot hospital in Memphis, Tenn.; a 300,000-square-foot court building in Montgomery, Ala., and a 22,000-seat sports arena in Louisville, Ky. Memphis is enjoying a low downtown vacancy rate of 8.8 percent through third-quarter 2008 and Bartlett, Tenn., one if its suburbs, has attracted more than $100 million in new capital investment from expansions and new business this year, creating more than 500 jobs.
