Event scheduled for Tuesday, June 9, at the Highlands Business Park
COOKEVILLE – The Cookeville community will officially welcome Ficosa North America – the first official tenant in the Highlands Business Park – during a groundbreaking ceremony scheduled next week.
The event will be held at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, June 9, at the park, 1100 Highlands Park Boulevard. It’s being held by the city of Cookeville, Putnam County, the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce, the Highlands Economic Partnership (formally the Highlands Initiative) and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.
Ficosa announced last week plans to build a new, 270,000-square-foot, $58 million state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Putnam County. The facility will be located on Lot B of the park, the same site certified in 2012 by TVA as a data center site. It’s the largest and most level lot in the park, said Melinda Keifer, economic and community development coordinator for the city of Cookeville.
“The data site certification was just a marketing designation to our name out there,” Keifer said. “At that time, it was an up-and-coming trend that hasn’t really come into fruition in Tennessee as was predicted. It in no way was a restriction.
“We all knew (that lot) would be the first to go.”
Ficosa is a Barcelona-based automotive supplier of mirror assemblies for Nissan, Ford, Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, General Motors and other auto manufacturers. The company has already started pre-production of the new facility and expects to begin limited production from the new factory in mid-2016.
For more information, call the Cookeville chamber at (931) 526-2211.