Ford BlueOval City, photographed while under construction in April 2023. (Photo: John Partipilo)
West Tennessee may be on track to add more than 176,000 people to its population in the 25 years following Ford and SK’s BlueOval City announcement in 2021, but several counties nearest to the new manufacturing plant have yet to see their resident counts balloon.
The massive electric vehicle and battery manufacturing campus sits in Stanton, a small Haywood County town near the borders of Fayette and Tipton counties.
Haywood County is expected to grow by a whopping 42.4% — an increase of 7,446 people for the largely rural region — by 2035, according to Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development projections. But so far, that growth has been slow to materialize. From 2022 to 2024, Haywood County lost about 1.3% of its population.
Population growth projections were compiled in August 2023 and represent a “moderately aggressive growth scenario that will not occur without substantial investments in infrastructure and public services,” according to a state memo.
Fayette County saw the highest population growth in this two-year stretch with a 2.2% increase, equalling roughly 1,000 new residents. But an influx of more than 3,500 people will have to move into the county to meet the state’s projection of 47,042 residents by 2025.
Tipton County grew by an estimated 0.9% between 2022 and 2024, but will need to add at least 2,500 people this year to meet the state’s 66,000-resident 2025 projection.
Representatives from the Department of Economic and Community Development could not be immediately reached for comment.
In Haywood County, BlueOval City has pledged to create a total 5,800 jobs as a condition of state incentives. Ford initially aimed to start production of its electric next-generation pickup truck in 2025, but the plant is now expected to start producing trucks in 2027. In the meantime, BlueOval SK at BlueOval City will begin producing battery cells late this year. A spokesperson for Ford said in August that the company remains confident that it will meet its obligations under the incentives agreement.
Manufacturing plant location announcements have rolled into West Tennessee over the past several years, particularly in the state’s expanding electric vehicle and battery sector. This growth has been incentivized by federal grants, loans and tax credits, including funding earmarked from the Inflation Reduction Act to bolster American electric vehicle manufacturing. The future of these Biden-era investments under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration is unclear.
Overall, West Tennessee’s 21 counties have already collectively surpassed the state’s 1.574 million population projection for 2025. Estimates from the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee Knoxville put the region’s population at 1,577,531 as of July 2024.
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