The first 160 jobs at Helix Electric's new Alabama plant will be a short walk from the classrooms where the work is taught.
What happened
Will Eldridge at WAFF 48 reported that Helix Electric broke ground Tuesday on a factory at the Jackson County Industrial Park in northeast Alabama, and Mecca Musick at 256 Today put the number on it: $45.3 million and 160 new jobs in the first phase. The company, a California based electrical contractor, calls the site an advanced fabrication campus. The town is Hollywood, population under a thousand, about forty miles up the Tennessee River valley from Huntsville.
What gets built there is the quiet half of electrical construction. The plant will turn out prefabricated electrical components and large modular assemblies: underground duct banks, duct bank risers, hangers, electrical devices and modular electrical skids. Two of those terms are worth unpacking. A duct bank is the bundle of conduit, usually encased in concrete, that carries power cable underground into a building or a substation yard. A skid is a complete electrical assembly, switchgear and wiring and all, built on a steel frame in a shop and then trucked to the site in one piece and bolted down.
That is the whole idea. Work that used to happen on a muddy site in the weather, one piece at a time, moves indoors to a factory floor where the same crew builds the same assembly over and over, under a roof, on a schedule. Then it ships. For the contractor it means a data center or a substation gets finished faster with fewer field hours. For a worker in Jackson County it means an indoor job with a shift, rather than a per diem and a truck.
Mary Claire Wooten at Alabama Political Reporter reported that the campus will be built in three phases to roughly 1.2 million square feet, with phase one taking just under two years. WAFF put the eventual build at roughly 1 million square feet. The gap is worth flagging rather than smoothing over: the phased total is a plan, and plans move.
Why it counts
The hiring plan is the part other counties should read twice.
The Kevin Dukes Career and Innovation Academy, Jackson County's career and technical school, sits directly across the road from the site. Until now it was the only thing in that industrial park. Helix representatives told reporters the academy's training programs factored into the site choice, and the company plans to hire out of it.
"One of our dreams was to see kids leaving the school and coming right here across the street to go to work." Nathan Lee, President and CEO, Jackson County Economic Development Authority
Julie Robertson, a senior at the academy, told WAFF that having an industrial company next door is amazing, and that her classmates on the electrical track are watching it go up. That is a pipeline you can see from a classroom window, which is a different thing from a pipeline described in a workforce study.
The county needed it. Jackson County's own resiliency plan notes that manufacturing already employs a large share of residents, but that many of them drive out of the county to do it. The same plan lists a shortage of industrial buildings and soft labor force participation among the things holding the place back. A campus that starts at 160 jobs and is designed to grow addresses both at once: a building where there was not one, and a reason for a graduate to stay.
The power side of this deserves credit too. The Tennessee Valley Authority and North Alabama Electric Cooperative worked the recruitment alongside the Jackson County Economic Development Authority and the Alabama Department of Commerce. Heidi Smith, TVA's vice president for economic development, said TVA was proud to partner with the cooperative on it. Utility economic development teams are not usually the headline, but they are often the reason a site visit turns into a groundbreaking: they size the service, they know what the load will be, and they make the first call.
The numbers
- Investment: $45.3 million
- New jobs, phase one: 160, with the company and local officials pointing to hundreds as later phases come on
- Phases: three, reaching roughly 1.2 million square feet per Alabama Political Reporter, roughly 1 million per WAFF
- Phase one timeline: just under two years
- Location: Jackson County Industrial Park, Hollywood, Alabama, a state designated Target County
- Products: underground duct banks, duct bank risers, hangers, electrical devices, modular electrical skids
- Partners: Tennessee Valley Authority, North Alabama Electric Cooperative, Jackson County Economic Development Authority, Alabama Department of Commerce
What comes next
Helix has done this once before. In 2021, Audrey Jensen of the Phoenix Business Journal reported that the company bought a 112,000 square foot building in Goodyear, Arizona for its first manufacturing plant, making the same kind of electrical building components for its crews nationwide, with more than 100 jobs in engineering, production, quality control and administration. Alabama is the bigger swing, and it is aimed east: company leadership framed Hollywood as a way to sit closer to its existing teams and East Coast customers.
Hiring details have not been posted yet. Both the company and the county authority said more would come as construction moves.
The Bottom Line
A fabrication campus is not a glamorous story. Nobody writes a feature about duct bank risers. But the buildout everyone keeps forecasting, the data centers and the substations and the transmission work, gets installed by people holding parts that somebody else had to build first. Jackson County just put that factory across the street from the school that teaches the trade. If the first 160 hires walk out of those classrooms and into that building, the model travels.
Sources: WAFF 48, Will Eldridge, Oct. 27, 2026 | 256 Today, Mecca Musick, Oct. 28, 2026 | Alabama Political Reporter, Mary Claire Wooten, Oct. 28, 2026 | Office of Gov. Kay Ivey, Oct. 27, 2026 | ABC15 Arizona and Phoenix Business Journal, Audrey Jensen, Sept. 24, 2021
