I keep hearing it said people up in Black Creek and Blitchton don’t know what’s about to hit them.
I think they’re getting the idea pretty quick.
And so, if you roll through the area these days you see the big For Sale signs springing up faster than warehouses, and that’ saying something these days.
There’s that famous great wide open space between I-16 and Groover Hill that was once skinny pine trees and sand and snakes and deer and wild hogs and turtles.
Now it’s construction cranes and portable buildings and dust and dump trucks and concrete and rebar and steal beams marking where the world’s third largest car manufacturer is roughly a year and some change away from making 300,000 electric vehicles a day, a mind bending number no matter how you do the math. A mega number.
All that creation will take place not far from where companies are already manufacturing or about to manufacture or distribute everything from AR-15s and bullets and cosmetics and furniture to engine parts and outdoor letters and fashion apparel and agricultural equipment and so on.
Jobs? Yeah, lots of them. And I also keep hearing nobody wants to work anymore.
Along the way what was recently rural to the nth degree is turning into anything but as folks who can are getting while the getting can be got.
And if it was me I’d probably do the same thing. Before the water runs out and neighborhoods are hemmed in or replaced by giant concrete boxes and the already overflowing metallic river of semi trucks pulling TEUS up and down the road to dodge the scales over on I-16. And the farms there go the way of newspapers. And the road construction stays five years behind the growth, always, because it always does.
Barring some unforeseen disaster, what’s taken place in South Bryan for decades is heading to North Bryan. But who are we to complain? Native Americans once roamed this area and didn’t have a single deed to a single lot.
They didn’t believe you owned the land, it was part of something bigger than any one person.
Naturally, Native Americans were no match for us Europeans with our eye on the ball. Still, if anybody has the right to complain about growth it’s Native Americans. If you can find any left around here.
It is a fact of life I think that the only thing constant is change. I read somewhere recently where a Florida transplant real estate salesman in Effingham County extolled the virtues of the county seat, saying it had a “Mayberry-like vibe,” but then in the next sentence went on about how there needed to be more for families moving in to do.
What people leave behind they bring with them, you see. Some is not enough. There always has to be more. That means the space between what there is and what there isn’t invariably leads what there isn’t to lose out, it seems, to the salesman’s notion of what comes next. Vision, like much else, is a commodity. Everything will have a price, which means it comes at a cost to somebody. Everybody wants to sell something. Especially when they say they don’t.
That includes things to do, and the ever present vinyl boxes that melt in the sun and suck water out of the grown to keep the sod from turning black.
And strip malls and convenience stores and Dollar Generals, as if there aren’t more than enough of all that stuff already.
The jobs are coming, though. I was down in McIntosh County recently and someone who works in Liberty County said his coworkers already eying the Hyundai Metaplant America, figuring the pay will be much better than anywhere else. I know. People may not know the scope of what will be until it is, but they know it’s coming and there’s not much they can do now to stop it. That horse left the barn way back.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s not going to be lower property taxes in the short haul.
Even with new industry coming in the county and cities and schools are going to need more taxes to fund more deputies and firefighters and classrooms and building inspectors and assistant superintendents and teachers and coaches and roads and jail cells and DFACS workers and EMTs on and on and on, because good or bad, people almost always bring with them what they thought they were leaving behind.
In the meantime, nothing is going to be the same ever again.
That’s what’s fixing to hit the people there. Like a giant steamroller.