DAJC preparing to expand available lots in Louisville industrial park

With all available lots in the Louisville Airport Industrial Park either sold or occupied, Jefferson County’s Development Authority it looking to begin preparing the wooded acres at the back of the property for potential growth.

Greg Sellars, Executive Director of the DAJC, appeared before the Jefferson County Commission in July asking for assistance clearing roads into woods covered back portion of the around 250-acre park that sits on the southern side of the Louisville Municipal Airport.

“There are no more available parcels on Bob Culvern Drive or Shannon Boulevard so the only thing we can do is begin to develop the back of the property so that more folks may come,” Sellars told the commissioners.

Presently, only about a fourth of the industrial park’s property at that location has been developed, but plans for the entire park were originally designed by Turnipseed Engineers in 2004.

Several years ago, the DAJC invested over $1 million in a large storm water detention pond for the site that would service the entire park.

“All of this is straight off the plan from Turnipseed in 2004,” Sellars said. “The position of these roads was in their conceptual plan 11 years before I came here.”

Conceptual plans for the rest of the property were updated in 2016 and Sellars said that he expects an even newer plan from the architects within the next two months.

Current plans show the proposed roads, the property divided into a variety of sized parcels and potential spec buildings.

“Now that we are so tight out there, we’re ready to go on back,” Sellars said. “We want to make these roads and start to survey and parcel these out. It wouldn’t be set in stone, because if someone came in and wanted this whole piece that’s fine. This is just a concept.”

The DAJC offered to pay fuel and gravel costs if the county could provide the equipment and the manpower to cut the 30-foot roads.

Sellars later said that one of the commissioners asked him if the DAJC had sold any of the undeveloped lots.

“I said no and explained that when prospects come to us looking for property, they are looking to minimize their risk and their time getting to start up,” Sellars said. “So, if I told a prospect they had to wait for us to cut the trees and make a road just so they could get to and see the property, they would be like, ‘Nevermind, bye.’”

Jefferson County Administrator Jerry Coalson said that he had spoken the county’s public works and roads supervisor and was told that the county could more easily schedule a project like this during the winter once the demands of grass-cutting season subsides.

Commissioner Wayne Davis moved that the project be revisited in September, with plans to move forward and cut the roads in the park once the county’s demands on the equipment are more manageable.

Sellars said that he expects any heavy industrial prospects will be more interested in the Kings Mill Industrial park outside of Wrens. The Louisville Airport Industrial Park, he said, will more than likely be more attractive to entrepreneurs or small businesses with 30 or fewer employees.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: DAJC preparing to expand available lots in Louisville industrial park