Mississippi

Amazon jobs in Madison MS will be more than announced

Published

2 years ago

April 11, 2024

Amazon jobs in Madison MS will be more than announced

Amazon Web Services Economic Development Director Roger Wehner told a collection of students, faculty and staff at Millsaps College on Wednesday that previously announced investment figures for two new hyperscale development center campuses will be just the tip of the iceberg.

Wehner made those comments as part of the Millsaps’ Tech Week programs.

Amazon Web Services made big news in January when it announced it will occupy two Madison County locations for the historic buildout for hyperscale development centers.

Mississippi lawmakers completed a $259 million incentive package for the Amazon Web Services $10 billion project in Canton and Madison County.

Gov. Tate Reeves said the project represents the single largest corporate capital investment in state history. Amazon Web Services will build two sites, one a 927-acre site and the other a 786-acre site for two hyperscale data centers.

However, Wehner said Amazon expects to invest much more when all is said and done.

“We were lucky to find Mississippi,” Wehner told the audience at Millsaps. “Let me make one thing clear, all of the news articles say we are going to invest $10 billion dollars. That’s actually not true. That is our minimum public commitment. We are going to invest far more than $10 billion. Rest assured it will be tens of billions of dollars.”

More ahead: Expert: Data center announcement could spur more technology development in Mississippi

What is a hyperscale data center? What is a hyperscale data center? How much energy does it take? Is Madison ready? We answer

Wehner also said the 1,000 jobs announced with the project in January is also a false number.

“There will be far more than 1,000 jobs,” he said. “That’s just a number we cannot fall below based on our negotiations. There will be a lot more than 1,000 jobs.”

He said that construction in Madison County will go on for the next 5-to-7 years.

“There won’t be this flurry of manufacturing and then construction jobs go away,” Wehner said. “We will build on both sites simultaneously as needed as we go along. That means we are continuously under construction. So, the thousands of construction jobs. There will be thousands of construction jobs and billions of dollars that will be invested in your community is the No. 1 benefit of us going to a community. We literally will drive a big segment of the economy. … This money will ripple through the local economy.”

In January, Reeves said that once open, the centers will hire 1,000 employees making an average annual salary of about $60,000 per year.

Wehner said that average annual salary for people working at AWS Mississippi will begin at around $80,000.

As for the state incentive package, the legislature approved appropriating $44 million, $32 million of which will go to training grants and educational opportunities, and the rest will go to site development assistance.

The three bills also approved loaning Madison County $215.1 million to assist with infrastructure, including road work, water and sewer lines and also $13 million for a new fire station near the plants. That loan will be paid back through fee-in-lieu agreements with Amazon.

The project also received sales-and-use tax emptions for equipment, 10-year corporate income tax exemptions, among others. However, if the company fails to meet certain hiring or investment benchmarks, the state could take back sales and use tax, as well as corporate income tax breaks.

Madison County Schools

While there are tax breaks for AWS in the deal with the State of Mississippi, Wehner was quick to point out that Amazon is not a company relaying on corporate welfare from the government.

“Let me be clear about this, we are the largest tax payer in every jurisdiction we are in. That’s a fact,” Wehner said. “In fact, our modeling currently predicts that for the school systems in Madison County, we will double their revenues in the first year. So, whatever the current budget is for Madison County schools, there will be a two-x factor in a year and a half or two years.”

He said that in Loudoun County and Prince William County in northern Virginia, two of the wealthiest counties in America, AWS provides 51% of their tax revenues for their schools systems.

“They have the highest-paid teachers in America, and we are providing the tax base for that,” Wehner said. “We take very seriously our partnership in the communities that we serve. We want our communities to grow from an educational perspective and from a workforce development perspective.”

Why Mississippi?

Since January’s announcement of AWS commitment to Mississippi and Madison County, Wehner has been bombarded with questions as to why the company would locate there.

“There were other states that couldn’t believe what little Mississippi did,” Wehner said. “What Mississippi did that beat out everybody else … In Mississippi, there was complete alignment between Entergy Mississippi, the legislature, the governor and regulators.”

He said it also helped that Madison County Economic Development Authority has done its homework over the last several years and were prepared when the opportunity arose.

“They all worked together and were able to remove the bureaucratic inefficiencies,” he said. “If they had not done that, Mississippi would not have won. But Mississippi did and Mississippi won. There are states out there that don’t want to do it and don’t have the will to do it and couldn’t get all the pieces put in place to do it. In Mississippi, it was a joint effort.”

He said Mississippi proved to be “nimble.”

“It was about about speed to market and Mississippi did a ton of things that others did not and they struck an incredibly sound deal,” Wehner said. “They did everything that needed to be done, protected the rate payers, made the right decisions. They just took the slowness out of it. That was incredibly important.”

Education outside Madison County

While the project is in Madison County, Wehner said the plan is to provide educational opportunities throughout the Metro area, specifically in Jackson.

“We are going to do the same educational programs outside of Madison County that we do in Madison,” he said. “Our goal is to push out farther. We know that the more people we empower with the knowledge of how to work at AWS, the better everyone is, including us. We know that the drive time in Mississippi is around 60 minutes. So, we want to expand to Jackson and even farther.”

Ross Reily can be reached by email at rreily@gannett.com or 601-573-2952. You can follow him on Twitter @GreenOkra1.

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Mississippi

Former federal attorney faces arson charge after two fires in Fondren

Published

3 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Former federal attorney faces arson charge after two fires in Fondren

A former federal attorney was arrested and charged with arson for two fires in Jackson, Mississippi.
The fires damaged a building and a dumpster at the Yana Club of Mississippi, a recovery community nonprofit.
The suspect, George McDowell Yoder III, has a history of previous arrests and was suspended from practicing law in 2022.

A former federal attorney was arrested and charged with arson after a building and dumpster were set on fire Friday, Feb. 27, in the Fondren area of Jackson, authorities said.

Jackson Fire Department Chief of Investigations Charles Felton said firefighters responded around 12 a.m. Friday in reference to a reported building fire and dumpster fire at Yana Club of Mississippi located at 555 Hartsfield Street.

Felton said fire crews arrived and found two separate fires in the Fondren neighborhood that caused damage to the Yana Club and the dumpster.

No injuries were reported.

After the fires were extinguished, a fire investigator was called to the scene. Investigators spoke with Capitol Police, who had a suspect detained.

Felton said the Jackson Fire Department Arson Division arrested George McDowell Yoder III, a former federal attorney, and charged him with first-degree arson of Yana Club and third-degree arson of the dumpster.

In 2021, WDAM TV reported Yoder had been a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi from 2009 to 2011. Yoder also ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Mississippi Court of Appeals in 2016.

According to a 2023 article by the Laurel Leader Call, Yoder was arrested in 2021 for residential burglary and faced multiple charges from 2021 to 2023. Yoder was also arrested in 2023 for arson charges, the outlet reported.

Documents from the Supreme Court of Mississippi also indicate that Yoder was admitted to the practice of law in the state in 1999 but later suspended in 2022 from practicing law for three years.

Court records show Yoder was found to be accepting fees from clients, abandoning them and then failing to deposit their retainers into a trust account. Yoder “commingled” his personal money with those of his clients and performed little to no work on a Madison County criminal case he was hired to resolve.

Jackson fire officials also said that a fire did not occur Friday morning at The Pig & Pint, a barbecue business located next to Yana Club.

Yana Club of Mississippi, a nonprofit organization, is described via their Facebook page as a “recovery community” that serves individuals seeking help with addictions.

The organization confirmed at 10:23 a.m. Friday via a social media post that the Yana Club building will be closed due to damages sustained from the fire.

“Due to the safety of our members, we will be closed through the weekend,” the organization stated. “We are working with [the] fire department and insurance to determine the best course of action. The building is currently deemed unsafe for meetings to be held. We will be in touch with updates when we have them.”

Pam Dankins is the breaking news reporter for the Clarion Ledger. Have a tip? Email her at pdankins@gannett.com.

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Mississippi

Renowned New York dance instructor visits Mississippi to recruit for summer program

Published

15 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Renowned New York dance instructor visits Mississippi to recruit for summer program

LAUREL, Miss. (WDAM) – A world-renowned dance instructor from New York visited Laurel Thursday to conduct a special class and do some recruiting for a prestigious summer dance program in the Big Apple.

Melanie Person, who is co-director of the Ailey School in New York, taught a master ballet class Thursday morning at Laurel Middle School.

It’s part of a three-day residency in the Magnolia State, organized by the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience in Meridian.

She’ll teach two other classes Friday in Meridian before hosting an audition Saturday for a prestigious summer dance program at the Ailey School.

“I typically tour in about six to eight cities in the U.S., and I recruit dancers to come to our summer intensive, so part of this weekend, in one of the classes, I will be accepting students to come to New York for our five-week summer intensive,” Person said.

“We accept the dancers we like, and we see if they are able to come. The decision to come to New York for the summer is a big undertaking for families, so we just hope that they can do it.”

Registration is required for that audition, which will be held at the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience.

To do that, click HERE.

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No. 12 Mississippi State’s Balance Shows Again in Road Win at Georgia Tech

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

No. 12 Mississippi State’s Balance Shows Again in Road Win at Georgia Tech

Mississippi State has won plenty of different ways during this 15-1 start, but Wednesday night in Atlanta felt like one of those games where the Bulldogs reminded everyone why they’ve looked so steady all month.

It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t stress‑free, but the 8-3 win over Georgia Tech was the kind of road win that shows a team knows exactly who it is and what buttons to push when things get a little weird.

Alyssa Faircloth set the tone again, even on a night when she didn’t have her cleanest beginning. She gave up a game‑tying homer in the second, shrugged, and then basically disappeared Georgia Tech’s lineup for the next three innings.

Eight strikeouts in nine batters the second time through the order, back‑to‑back innings striking out the side. The only real hiccup came on another leadoff homer in the sixth, and by then she’d already done the heavy lifting.

And while Faircloth was settling in, the lineup did what it’s been doing all year: spreading the damage around.

Des Rivera wasted no time, jumping on the first pitch of the second inning and sending it out. When Georgia Tech tied it, Nadia Barbary answered immediately with a solo shot of her own. It wasn’t loud or flashy, but it was the kind of response good teams make without thinking.

The middle innings were more about pressure than power. Barbary worked a walk, Kiarra Sells split the gap for an RBI double, and Anna Carder did her job with a sac fly. Suddenly it was 4-1, and Mississippi State had the game exactly where it wanted it with Faircloth cruising, the lineup stacking quality at‑bats, and the defense staying clean.

The seventh inning, though, is where the Bulldogs turned a solid win into a comfortable one. Sells homered again, and then Rivera and Tatum Silva kept the inning alive long enough for Morgan Bernardini to drop the hammer. Her three‑run shot to center didn’t just put the game away; it capped off the kind of night she’s been stringing together for a week now. She’s 7‑for‑11 during her four‑game hitting streak and looks like a hitter who’s seeing everything in slow motion.

Peja Goold handled the final outs, picking up her second save and slamming the door on a Georgia Tech team that kept trying to make things interesting late.

What stands out most about this win isn’t the four homers or the 11 strikeouts or even the 15-1 record. It’s how routine it all felt.

Mississippi State went on the road, took a couple of punches, and never looked rattled. Rivera homered. Barbary homered. Sells homered. Bernardini homered. Faircloth dominated. Goold closed. It was the same formula, just in a different ballpark.

Now the Bulldogs head to Clemson for a weekend that should tell us even more about who they are. But if Wednesday night is any indication, they’re traveling with a lineup that can hurt you anywhere and a pitching staff that doesn’t mind carrying the load when needed.