Toyo Tire Plant Deal on Front Burner

BARTOW COUNTY, GA-Residents in rural Bartow County, 40 miles northwest of Downtown Atlanta, don’t like it but their elected officials and Toyo Tire Co. of Osaka, Japan are close to doing a $150-million deal for an estimated 500,000-sf manufacturing plant that would hire 350 local workers to produce two million tires a year, area industrial brokers in a position to know tell GlobeSt.com.

Meanwhile, an activist group calling itself Residents Against Spot Zoning is preparing to file a lawsuit in state court challenging the county’s Feb. 4 decision to rezone the 150 acres of farm land as suitable for industrial development, brokers tell GlobeSt.com. However, Toyo officials and representatives of the Joint Cartersville-Bartow County Regional Industrial Authority don’t expect the suit to have serious legal merit, according to county staffers following the controversy.

Toyo already has set a tentative April ground-breaking date with plant production anticipated to start in early 2006, county staffers tell GlobeSt.com.