Volkswagen Executives Tour Chattanooga Site

The CEO of Volkswagen's Chattanooga Operations, Frank Fischer, and his management team take a tour of the plant site at the Enterprise South Industrial Park as work resumes following weeks of wet weather.

"First of all, we're absolutely clear on our commitments to the Chattanooga operation," Fischer said Monday morning.

Despite rumors fueled by a sinking US and worldwide economy Fischer made it clear to local business and political leaders the company stands firm with it's goals. 

The plant is being built according to schedule Fischer said, as he presented architectural renderings of what the 1.9-million square foot manufacturing facility will look like. There are three distinct sections: a paint shop, body shop and assembly shop. A pedestrian bridge spanning a re-routed stream connects the plant with employee and visitor parking along with a training center being jointly developed with Chattanooga State Technical Community College.

After the presentation at the Chattanoogan Hotel Fischer met with community leaders at the plant site and joked about watching the facility grow saying "it's like having your own baby, isn't it, it's our baby here."

The excitement is obvious as Fischer and his team are back at the sight watching construction moving along again. As we reported last week work was slowed down three of the last four weeks because Chattanooga has been swamped with nearly 15 inches of rain since the beginning of December.

Major earth moving operations continue this week as work to build roads and utilities is about to begin. Construction on the buildings will begin by the end of this month when crews will start laying footings on the gravel pad to begin work on the paint shop.

"Each month now that you actually look out here you're actually going to see the buildings come out of the ground, so now month-by-month you can see the progress," according to Don Jackson, President of Chattanooga operations.

The company just formed what's called the Volkswagen Group of America Chattanooga Operations, LLC. This allows the local operation to do it's own hiring, accounting and procurement of equipment and parts suppliers to build a new mid-sized sedan.

They're all key components in VW's plans to triple it's share of the US market and become the number-one seller of vehicles in the world.

"The more I come here the more I feel like coming home," Fischer said.

It will take the rest of this year to build the plant. Much of 2010 will be devoted to installing the equipment that will make cars.

And of course we are waiting any day now for Volkswagen to show us what the new, still un-named car built in Chattanooga will look like and what it's specifications will be.

Within the next two months Volkswagen officials will give us more information about it's ongoing hiring process. So far about 100 people have been hired for local work. VW plans to hire a total of 2,000 or more people by the time production begins in early 2011.