County given money to extend industrial park road
The state is continuing its support of Warren County’s efforts to recruit new industry by granting wide latitude in the use of leftover funds from a utilities grant to extend the existing road in Mt. View Industrial Park.
“The county and industrial board has about 150 acres of land in the industrial park that we don’t have a road into,” said director of economic development Don Rigsby. “We have a road up to it, but not into the property, and some of the best property in the park is in the back side of the park.”
The lack of access has presented problems for Rigsby, who has reported how at least two prospects have located elsewhere in part because they couldn’t actually see the land available.
“Most site selectors don’t like that,” Rigsby said. “If you’re buying a house, or a property, you want to be able to drive right up to it and look at it.”
Although everyone involved locally agreed the road was badly needed, the main concern was funding. Commissioner George Smartt said the county was in a sort of catch-22 situation, since the state would fund roads if the county had a solid prospect, but in order to get a prospect, the county had to be able to show the property.
“Without a prospect, no road. Without a road, no prospect,” Smartt said during a recent joint meeting of the county’s Land Committee and Economic Development Committee.
During the joint meeting, the possibility of using money left over from a grant to run utilities to the former spec building, now Morrison Tool & Fab, was discussed. Only a rough road into the back industrial park property is necessary and could be built with minimum funds.
“We started looking at ways to provide a road,” Rigsby said. “It’s very expensive to build roads, drainage and all that. But we did find a way. I found that our water and sewer grant that we had, that we got approved, had a few dollars left over from that. The contractor’s bid was lower than the grant that was allowed.”
Rigsby wasn’t sure the state would permit the county to use the extra money for this purpose, but felt it was worth a try. After Rigsby wrote a letter to the state’s department of economic development, the move was approved.
Grissom Underground is the contractor which did the water and sewer lines for the Morrison Tool & Fab project and that company will also be retained to do the road expansion.