Yeah, I'm not sure the San Antonio development is analogous (although I understand what you're saying). To get a lay of the land, Huntsville for the last 15 years has been one of the more rapidly growing mid-sized cities in the country, been named "best _____" by tons of different publications. On it's western edge is Madison, a suburb that has grown from ~25k to 50k+ in the last 15 years mainly driven by the high standard of living/low cost of living. E.g. Niche.com named Madison "the best place to live in Alabama" in 2017. It's also made numerous other lists the same.
There has actually been massive amounts of new construction over the last 12 years in Madison. Started with the last Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) in ~2005. I moved here in 2009 in the mdist of all that. That building boom is one of the reasons I didn't sell when I moved to a different part of town....new construction was generally suppressing prices. For example, when I bought my (brand new) house that is now my rental in 2009, there were about 10 houses in the development. There are now about 250. And my development is one of dozens in the area. Lots of new retail, industry, etc that have moved in. All that to say, the area has been for the last 10 years one of the most desirable places to live with tons of growth.
The new Toyota/Mazda plant will be just west of Madison (yes, Huntsville as a city actually extends out and around Madison, the western suburb). This area is currently all farm land with a couple of pretty big developments over the last couple of years (Polaris built a $140M facility about a year ago in this same "megasite area" that Toyota is going in; BOCAR, an auto supplier just announced a $115M facility two months ago).
So yeah, good points about the SA plant. I get that. I think this is a different dynamic in that you're plopping the $1.6B plant down on the edge of what has been one of the more explosively growing, desirable places to live in the region. I suppose one can only wait and see!
