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Toyota loss tough, but there''s a silver lining: leaders capitalizing on good press.

Article Excerpt
BATESVILLE -- It was a tough loss.

For more than six months, Paul Alexander waited to hear where Toyota would build its sixth North American automotive assembly plant. When the list was whittled to four sites, the rural town of Como, located 48 miles south of Memphis on Interstate 55 and with a population of 1,300 people, was still on it.

But when Japan's largest automaker made the announcement earlier this month, it was San Antonio, Texas, that won the $800-million plant, 2,000 jobs, and $37.4-million payroll. Instead of being built in Mississippi, close to the Memphis MSA, population 1.1 million, the auto assembly plant, which will produce 150,000 Toyota Tundra full-size pickup trucks annually, will be built on a 2,000-acre site in Bexar County, Texas, population 1.4 million.

"It hurts," said Alexander, CEO of Panola Partnership Inc., the local economic development organization that worked on the superproject. "It hurts bad right now. I think everybody locally and at the state level did everything they could possibly have done to land the deal."

For Alexander, the superproject represented many sleepless nights. Since joining Panola Partnership in January 2001, the...

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