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Regional authority pursues two industrial sites; Berea 300-acre site advance targets PDI and $6M federal CPF funds
Summary
Advisors presented plans for a Berea 300-acre industrial site (estimated ~200 developable acres) and a possible 800-acre Madison County site, noted engineering and funding steps (PDI application, RFP for engineering) and projected jobs and tax revenue at full build-out.
The Budget, Finance and Economic Development Committee received an update Aug. 19 from MWM Consulting and the newly formed Central Kentucky Regional Business Park Authority on two candidate industrial parks: a smaller Berea site the city has offered (approximately 300 acres, with estimated developable acreage near 200) and a larger, under-contract 800-acre northern Madison County site.
Lucas Witt of MWM Consulting briefed the committee, citing the Berea site's advantages: city ownership, entitlement for heavy industrial uses, proximate utilities and adjacency to an existing industrial park. Witt said engineering (an RFP for services) will begin in September to determine final developable acreage because portions of the Berea parcel include floodplain; that engineering will support a September application to the Kentucky Product Development Initiative (PDI), making the engineering eligible for reimbursement if the PDI award is granted.
Witt also said the authority has applied to Congressman Barr's office for federal community project funding (CPF) and that up to $6,000,000 had been requested to help balance the Berea site's topography and make additional acreage developable. He said the region's advanced-manufacturing employers nearby demonstrate a local workforce pool desirable to potential users.
The Madison County 800-acre property is under an extended due-diligence contract assigned to the authority; Witt said geotechnical, wetlands and phase-1 environmental studies are complete and master conceptual planning and traffic analysis are underway. He characterized the larger site as better suited to multiple users and longer-term development, and the Berea site as targetable for 20-to-70-acre supplier users.
Witt and authority representatives provided preliminary development modeling: if Berea yields roughly 200 developable acres, the advisory estimate is approximately 700 to 1,000 jobs at full build-out and roughly $1,000,000 annually in occupational tax revenue under the wage assumptions used in their model. For the 800-acre site, MWM's conservative internal model estimated as many as 3,000 jobs at full build-out and approximately $4,000,000 annually in occupational tax revenue, exclusive of property, net-profits or insurance-premium tax. Witt noted these are evolving estimates contingent on engineering outcomes and market demand.
Committee members asked about funding and county contributions. Kevin Atkins and other partners said counties had initially planned larger matching commitments for PDI applications (discussions of $2,000,000 per county were part of earlier planning), but due to earlier site changes the group did not apply in the first round; representatives said each county has contributed $100,000 so far to advance the project and that PSAs and project accounting will be reported to partners as engineering and grant outcomes become clear.
Witt said the authority is actively marketing the properties to site-selection firms and noted comparable regional case studies (multi-county site authorities and spec building strategies) that informed the authority's approach. The committee thanked presenters and asked for further updates as grant applications and engineering work proceed.
