A drive along Pulaski Pike in northwest Huntsville is a visit to a time capsule. Little, or nothing, has changed in decades.

The four-lane road from bustling University Drive downtown to the sprawling farmland of northern Madison County is framed with aging homes and virtually no economic development.

But that, Huntsville city councilman Devyn Keith said, is about to change.

It's a corridor, as Keith described it, teeming with possibilities of energy and prosperity seen almost everywhere else in the Rocket City.

"Building up the Pulaski corridor is everything to me," said Keith, nearing the end of his first year on the council representing District 1.

Keith's comments came soon after the city council last week approved a project development agreement with Aerojet Rocketdyne - a high-profile aerospace company that has agreed to relocate its headquarters to Cummings Research Park in west Huntsville and, more specifically to Keith's ambition, build a 135,000 square manufacturing facility in North Huntsville Industrial Park.

Altogether, the project will bring at least 705 new jobs to Huntsville - the vast majority at the manufacturing facility - with minimum average annual salaries of at least $79,560. As an incentive to attract possibly even more jobs as part of the project, Huntsville has promised to pay moving expenses for up to 1,200 Aerojet Rocketdyne employees.

The Aerojet Rocketdyne facility will be in the same park as Toyota Motor Manufacturing, which generates more than 1,400 jobs.

And jobs, particularly high-paying jobs, in struggling north Huntsville are critical.

"It means jobs," Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said of the impact on north Huntsville. "We've got 1,400 jobs at Toyota sitting right next to (the Aerojet Rocketdyne planned facility) so it just means we're putting together some synergy of industries that are actually producing something in that area.

"We're starting to get a lot of interest in that area."

It's a windfall of opportunity for a part of town that simply hasn't had it. As valued as Toyota is in north Huntsville and the city as a whole, the plant opened in 2003 and region has seen little economic development since then.

The Aerojet investment, however, can be a game changer, Keith said.

A new high school, Mae Jemison, opened last year on Pulaski Pike to replace Johnson High School - which was located near Pulaski but wrapped within a community of homes off Winchester Road.

In Keith's analysis, the modern high school gives the Pulaski corridor a jolt of energy. And with the 44-acre Johnson campus largely unused except as a police training center, private development can further give the area a boost.

And now here come new, high-paying jobs by the hundreds from Aerojet.

"This builds on a number of things," Keith said. "It makes sense when you start to make the connection with the Johnson property development and what that continues to be and you get families starting to build up the Pulaski corridor. You have a new school, you have potentially a new mixed-use facility development with new housing and you continue to bring businesses out to the industrial park."

The Johnson development is still in the planning stages. At a public meeting last month, Keith and city officials outlined a vision for the property that primarily called for private developers to build waves of new houses on the campus made more alluring by preserving green space, the Johnson High School gym and a small retail development.

At the meeting, the plan got pushback from those in the community - including former longtime councilman Richard Showers, who lost his seat to Keith last year.

Showers doubted the plan of private developers choosing to build houses in the area, saying there had been no new houses built there in 20 years.

That's exactly the point, Keith said.

"My predecessor said he hadn't built new houses in 20 years," Keith said. "Well, I want to change that. I want us to build with private market, high market development that incites some sort of investment from the people who are moving here."

There is also the matter of changing the culture of north Huntsville, some of which has been prone to higher crime rates than elsewhere in the city.

"There's going to be people moving from California and they're bringing new jobs that are going to pay a higher increase in the median salary," Keith said. "So the biggest thing for me is to get a place ready. They talk about an advantage site for industrial (development), I'm trying to make north Huntsville an advantage site.

"And the thing we have to remember is the people moving here don't know anything about Huntsville. They only know what we present to them. So it is important that I compound upon the wins of the industrial park with the development of a place like Johnson to expedite, hopefully, the growth of northwest Huntsville in a new way."

Another approach initiated by Keith is aiding the Northwest Huntsville Business Association. He lobbied for the city council to add the association to its list of non-profit organizations it financially supports and, in a 3-2 vote, secured $15,000 that he described as "seed money."

Seeking to model it after the South Huntsville Business Association, Keith said it might lead to a new business or two a year along Memorial Parkway in north Huntsville.

"That changes the landscape slowly but surely," Keith said.

Big picture, the Pulaski corridor has a new school, new jobs on the way and the prospect for new homes.

"You want to hit the essentials," Keith said. "We then move to commercialization, potentially landing grocers and eateries and so forth. But you start with jobs and you start with houses and you start with education, it's really hard to go wrong there."