3/9/2010 12:47:00 PM Greenwood hopes shovel-ready, 350-acre park will spur business
Joseph S. Pete, Daily Journal of Johnson County Staff Writer
Greenwood won't wait for private developers to plan the city's next business park.
The city has hired an engineer to design plans for how to lay out and extend utilities to a potential business park on 350 acres of privately owned land along Worthsville Road.
City officials hope to lure advanced manufacturing companies to a site that will have access to a railroad spur and an Interstate 65 interchange.
Engineering designs will show how much it would cost to develop the land and how the site would be set up, Mayor Charles Henderson said.
The city's goal is to get the land ready to construct buildings on, such as by determining where rainwater would drain.
New companies tend to be more interested in prospective sites if they don't have to spend months getting sewers extended or figuring out where to dig rainwater-collection ponds, Henderson said.
To help sell the business park to new businesses, Greenwood wants to get a "shovel-ready site" designation from the state, meaning the land is ready to build on.
Franklin Tech Park off Interstate 65 is the only other business park in Johnson County with that label, Indiana Economic Development Corp. spokeswoman Blair West said. The designation helps economic development officials pitch sites to prospective businesses that can't wait on sewer and other infrastructure projects before opening a new facility, she said.
Greenwood's vision is that several high-tech manufacturers will locate on what is now farmland on the city's southside, Henderson said. City officials hope the business park would bring high-skilled, high-paying jobs and more property tax revenue.
The proposed business park is south of Worthsville Road and east of the Louisville & Indiana Railroad tracks next to measurement devise manufacturer Endress+Hauser. The land belongs to several property owners, including investors who bought more than 40 acres.
Most of the property owners have said they would be willing to sell to developers, Henderson said.
Greenwood plans to spend about $40,000, mostly in grant money, on initial site development work such as land surveying and drainage designs.
Banning Engineering will figure out where a new rail spur would be located, look at where rainwater would drain and determine how to extend utilities such as water, sewers, gas and electricity.
The city expects to get a $20,000 grant from Duke Energy and a $10,000 grant from the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to cover most of the cost of the work. Greenwood would have to contribute $7,300 but has not figured out where the money would come from, Henderson said.
The Greenwood Board of Public Works and Safety hired the engineering firm, which will come up with different plans on how utilities could be extended to the site, depending on how it's developed.
The initial designs would leave developers with options of what to build and where to locate buildings, Henderson said. Greenwood wants to encourage the developer to construct small to mid-sized buildings no larger than 50,000-square-feet since that's what's been in demand and smaller companies don't have massive layoffs when the economy sours, he said.
A developer likely would dig retention ponds, level the land and do other construction work to get the site ready for buildings. But Greenwood plans to help a developer apply for grants that would offset the cost of extending utilities such as gas and electricity to the site, Henderson said.
Extending utilities
Part of the engineering firm's work will include preparing grant applications to get utilities to the land.
Greenwood plans to try to recruit a local or national developer to take over the project after the economy turns around, Henderson said.
Once the land is ready for construction, economic development and city officials should be better able to sell the business park to prospective companies, he said.
"We see a lot of potential at this site, but we have to make businesses see it too," Henderson said. "If we can get this done, we can start marketing."
Companies that are expanding or relocating typically prefer sites already served with utilities or ready to build on, West said. Often, they are on a tight timetable because they have to expand to fulfill a new contract or want to gain a competitive advantage by bringing a new product line to market quickly, she said.
"Increasingly, companies only want to look at sites that are shovel-ready so that they don't have as many speed bumps along the way." he said.
To attract companies, the city has been working to get sewers, a railroad spur, and an interstate exit built near the site of the future business park.
Greenwood recently extended a new sewer line to the Endress+Hauser campus to support the company's planned expansion, and that infrastructure also could at least serve the new business park, city director of operations Norm Gabehart said.
Utilizing railroad
Greenwood has been in talks with the railroad about building a spur that would allow companies in the new business park to ship their goods by rail, Henderson said.
At this point, officials haven't determined whether the railroad, the city, a developer, or all those parties would pay to build the spur, he said.
Rail access would be a strong selling point to companies that want to keep transportation costs low, Henderson said.
Greenwood also hopes to get a new I-65 interchange built about 1.5 miles east of the proposed business park, so businesses would have two options for distributing products.
Editor, John C. DePrez Jr.; Executive Editor, Carol Rogers; Publishers: IBRC and IAR
