Alabama finished in the middle of the pack of its region for the number of substantial business projects started in 2022.
According to Site Selection Magazine's annual Governor's Cup rankings for 2022, announced this week, Alabama finished fifth out of eight in the South Central Region with a total project count of 111. Alabama also finished fifth in 2021. Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee finished higher than Alabama in the region. Mississippi, Oklahoma and Arkansas finished 2022 with a lower project total than Alabama.
Site Selection's Conway Projects Database tracks projects that meet one or more of these criteria: a minimum investment of $1 million, creation of 20 or more new jobs or 20,000 square feet or more of new construction.
The outlet also ranks the states by how many qualifying projects were announced per capita. Alabama finished fourth in the South Central region, with 22 projects per million.
Kansas finished first in the nation for total projects per capita with 138 deals – one less than last year's 139. For total qualified projects, Texas claimed its 11th consecutive Governor's Cup and was the only state to surpass the 1,000-project mark with 1,028 projects in 2022. That's more than twice the number of projects of second-place Illinois's 487, according to the magazine.
Alabama had the eighth-largest new project by physical size in the nation in 2022 when First Solar announced its move to Courtland. The project is an investment of approximately $1.1 billion and expected to create 700 new manufacturing jobs, according to the company's press release when the project was announced in November. The project is 2.2 million square feet, according to Site Selection.
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