WEST POINT, GA-Kia Motors Corp., which had planned elaborate ground-breaking ceremonies April 26 and again on May 10, has cancelled the construction start of its $1.2-billion, one-million-sf manufacturing plant. The industrial asset is set to rise in this town of 4,000 residents, about 75 miles southwest of Downtown Atlanta.

However, sources in the office of Gov. Sonny Perdue, who personally signed the deal with Kia Motors in Seoul in March, tell GlobeSt.com plans for the plant are still alive, even though a third ground-breaking start hasn't been set. An alleged bribery scandal in South Korea, involving Kia Motors' parent, Hyundai Motor Group, caused the plant's delay here, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

The plant was tentatively scheduled to open by 2009, employing up to 2,500 workers in this west Georgia community, as GlobeSt.com previously reported. The state's deal with Kia was denied by government and local officials right up to the closing of the transaction on March 12. Kia had planned to produce an average 300,000 passenger cars annually, along with an undetermined number of SUVs or minivans.

Under terms of the deal, Georgia planned to buy a 2,200-acre site for the plant along Interstate 85 from about 30 individual property owners for $36 million or about $16,363 per acre (38 cents per sf). At a later date, the state planned to sell the site to Kia for $2 million or about $909 per acre (two cents per sf), as GlobeSt.com previously reported.

The total economic incentives package Georgia offered Kia Motors came to $410 million or about $164,000 per job creation, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. That is the highest job-creation incentives package offered to an American or foreign corporation by any Southeast state to date, according to state government sources in a position to know.