Site Selection Places Louisville Highest Among Ohio River Job Site Rankings
Site Selection magazine has ranked Louisville, Ky., its top metropolitan area in its Ohio River Corridor rankings, which were released earlier this month.
Louisville tied with Cincinnati, Ohio, in the magazine’s 2022 rankings. This year, Louisville led the way, with the Weirton-Steubenville West Virginia and Ohio metropolitan area coming in second place. Cincinnati finished third.
The rankings come from an index of corporate end-user facility investment data entered into the magazine’s proprietary Conway Projects Database over an 18-month period. It includes every county, metropolitan area and micropolitan area that touches the river and has welcomed at least two projects. It is then evaluated cumulatively and per capita by number of projects, affiliated project investment and job creation numbers.
The Evansville, Ind., region ranked fourth on the list, and Pittsburgh, Pa., rounded out the top five.
Others on the list were Madison, Ind, in sixth place; Wheeling, W.Va. in seventh; Maysville, Ky., in eighth, Huntington, W.Va.-Ashland, Ky. Area in ninth; and Portsmouth, Ohio in 10th place.
Site Selection noted that GE Appliances, a Haier company, celebrated the completion of a $450 million investment into its Appliance Park plant in September, a project first announced in 2021. Roadmaster Drivers School, a division of Werner Enterprises, has also located a training center in Shepherdsville, just south of Louisville.
In Weirton, energy storage company Form Energy broke ground in May for a 750-job manufacturing facility for 100-hour iron-air battery systems. Other investments in the region have been from JSW Steel in Mingo Junction, Ohio; Fanti USA in Weirton; Apex Environmental in Amsterdam, Ohio; Pure Watercraft in Beech Bottom, W.Va.; and Heavy Iron Oilfield Services in Chester, W.Va.
Investments in the Cincinnati area have included logistics projects from Amazon Air and Deutsche Post (DHL) in Hebron, Ky.; and a 1,500-job, $150 million investment from Medpace in Cincinnati.
Site Selection said that more than 45 percent of the 276 projects examined for the rankings have a manufacturing component. Logistics accounted for more than 26 percent of all projects.
