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State Adds $70 Million Bridge to its Morgantown Industrial Park Connectivity Plans

July 28, 2023 2:00 pm Comments Off

Due to the complexities of the federal regulatory process, the state of West Virginia is worried it can’t make good on its promise to deliver improved interstate access to Mountaintop Beverage via a new I-79 Harmony Grove interchange in a timely fashion.

To remedy that, the West Virginia Division of Highways now says it’s going to build a $70 million bridge over the Monongahela River by the end of 2025 in addition to building the nearby Harmony Grove exit, currently estimated at $41 million.

The key phrase there is “in addition to.”

“It’s not a give and take. It’s a give and give situation,” Morgantown Monongalia Metropolitan Planning Organization Executive Director Bill Austin said. “They are committed, from everything they’ve told us, to Harmony Grove and to this bridge idea.”

Local officials have been digesting this information for about a week. It was made public on Wednesday.

But it’s been brewing in Charleston at least since May.

That, according to Austin, is when he heard secondhand that the DOH had hired a consultant under the auspices of the Harmony Grove project to conduct a feasibility study.

On July 18, an advertisement ran in the Charleston Gazette-Mail seeking a firm to produce right-of-way plans and construction contract plans for a bridge connecting U.S. 119 to the industrial park.

On July 19, the DOH showed up with the preliminary design study in hand to inform local officials of its intentions and task the MPO Policy Board with selecting a location for the new bridge.

When it meets in August, the MPO Policy Board will select from:

A bridge crossing the river south of the Morgantown Lock and north of the BFS gas station on Don Knotts Boulevard. This option would include a more basic bridge but require a complete reconstruction of River Road. A portion of the existing River Road would remain to provide access to homes and businesses.

A crossing that would meet U.S. 119 north of Scott Avenue and include an intersection with Smithtown Road. This option would require a more expensive bridge but connect directly to the southern end of the industrial park’s street network.

Due to topographical challenges, a third option crossing the river at Green Bag Road was eliminated.

According to data provided Wednesday, all options were estimated to fall between $64 million and $71 million.

Ultimately, Wednesday’s announcement begs a question – will the state actually build two projects currently estimated north of $110 million to better connect the industrial park?

Both Austin and Morgantown Area Partnership President and CEO Russ Rogerson say they believe it will.

One, Rogerson said, the state has committed to doing so. Two, he continued, the Harmony Grove project will be primarily financed locally through the new Morgantown Industrial Park TIF district.

“At some point you have to say ‘We trust you’ or ‘we don’t trust you.’ If the option is not allowing the state to meet the commitment they made to Mountaintop – if we say no – then we’re automatically saying Mountaintop is not going to expand and we’re not going to have anything for the industrial park. At that point we might as well fold up shop,” Austin said. “Everybody is taking it at face value. I understand the skepticism. I was skeptical.”

In May, Mountaintop Beverage CEO Jeffrey Sokal told The Dominion Post the 330,000 square-foot bottling facility wouldn’t be in West Virginia without infrastructure commitments from the state — specifically the new Harmony Grove interchange.

On Wednesday, he said he believes the state will honor that commitment, allowing both Mountaintop Beverage and the surrounding park to grow.

“On a long-term basis, [Morgantown Industrial Park] access to both 68 via the bridge and 79 via Harmony Grove makes this industrial site and the 100 or so acres of undeveloped property extremely attractive to companies like Mountaintop,” Sokal said. “The governor, the DOH and local representatives like Senator Mike Oliverio and Delegate Joe Statler should be commended for making this happen.”

Monongalia County Commission President Tom Bloom said he too is hopeful everything the DOH has promised will come to fruition.

“They have continued to state that this administration is in support of moving ahead on both projects,” he said. “We have requested to get that in writing, and we have gotten as much assurance as we can get without getting it in writing.”

Original Article by Ben Conley on dominionpost.com

Original Article Here

West Virginia Commerce Dept., Development Office continues economic development hot streak

February 16, 2021 3:21 pm Comments Off

CHARLESTON — Over the past year, officials with the West Virginia Commerce Department and the West Virginia Development Office have continued to land one big fish after the next.

From a wind farm planned for a former coal mine site to a test center for an emerging mode of transportation, those responsible for the state’s economic development have brought in projects with the promise of thousands of new jobs and million of dollars in future taxes.

“The announcements kind of speak for themselves,” said Commerce Secretary Ed Gaunch. “I would say that we’re really on a record pace. From my standpoint, I think you’ll see more of this going forward.”

“We’re just getting started,” he said. “This diversification effort, this intentional effort are really moving the needle forward.”

Other notable recent victories include the expansion of the workforce at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries location in Bridgeport; supply company Klöckner Pentaplast has chosen its production facility in Beaver for its production expansion; and Gruppo Fanti, an Italian metal packaging manufacturing company, has announced plans to open a plant in Weirton.

The staff of the Commerce Department and the Development Office are due much of the credit for the recent successes, Gaunch said.

“We’ve been very intentional, we’ve been strategic, and we’ve been very results-oriented in what we’ve asked our people to do,” he said.

The two agencies have forged meaningful working partnerships with other state agencies, Gaunch said.

“K though 12 education, the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Environmental Protection and even to some degree the Department of Heath and Human Resources,” he said. “We’ve learned to work together.”

The Commerce Department and the Development Office also adopted a “regionalized” approach to economic development, one that highlights the existing strengths and resources available in the different parts of the state, Gaunch said.

“When people learn that they can do much more together as a region than they can as an individual city or town or county, then much better things happen,” he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has obviously changed the way the business of economic development is conducted, but it has also presented unique opportunities, Graney said.

“Traditionally we had attended trade shows and been on missions and visited companies at their headquarters, but we haven’t been able to do that in 10 months and probably won’t be able to do so for the foreseeable future,” he said.

Focus has shifted online, and efforts have been thrown behind an aggressive digital marketing strategy, Graney said.

“It’s curious that we were able to stand up this effort in the face of … totally changing our direction and, frankly, in many ways making us that much more attractive,” he said.

There are several initiatives the two agencies would like to see lawmakers and the governor support in order to further promote economic development efforts in the state, Graney said.

“Because every one of our existing businesses and every one of our prospective acquisition candidates is concerned about workforce, we would like to restore the funding to the Governor’s Guaranteed Workforce effort that was taken away several administrations ago during some lean years,” Graney said.

The program provided new or expanding companies training funds and technical assistance to support effective employee training strategies.

“When we’re making an offer to a new business, they are definitely very interested in that, in particular, if they are represented by a site consultant,” Graney said. “Frankly, every state that we compete against, every state in the union has something very similar to this.”

Another item on the two agencies’ economic development wish list is the creation of a “closing fund,” which would give the state funds to provide final incentives to close a deal, Graney said.

“Many of the states we compete against have a closing fund that allows for that last-minute offer that potentially lures you into locating in West Virginia,” he said. “It may be that another state has a bigger checkbook than we do, and our current methodology for doing that is complicated and very legal fee intensive. We’d like to see a little bit more flexibility there.”

The state also needs to pursue strategies focused on developing build-ready sites, Graney said.

“We still have some challenges with having shovel-ready, buildable sites in the state of West Virginia,” he said. “Often, unfortunately we’re just passed over because we don’t have a site that’s ready to build on.”

Although he agreed that most states tend to have deeper pockets than West Virginia, no one can match its citizens’ work ethic, Gaunch said.

“Nobody out-hustles us, and nobody out-works us,” he said. “We think that we have the advantage there.”

Written by: Charles Young SENIOR STAFF WRITER at The State Journal

8,000 Jobs Added Within Past Decade in North Central WV

January 22, 2019 3:38 pm Comments Off

North Central West Virginia continues to lead the state in economic progress, according to local experts.

Although many other areas of the Mountain State lag behind national averages in most major economic indicators, the North Central region has continued to thrive and grow, according to John Deskins, director of the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

“North Central West Virginia is more stable than the nation, it seems. Or, at least, the patterns of the last couple of decades have indicated we have greater stability,” Deskins said. “The region’s economy is very resilient. Part of that depends on the fact that we have some really important federal employment in the region; we have the university in the region; and we have a lot of health care in the region. Those sectors of the economy tend to be really stable,” he said.

The Bureau of Business and Economic Research recently released a study analyzing the NCWV region’s economy over the past few years and looking ahead to expected economic performance through 2023, Deskins said. Businesses in Monongalia, Marion, Harrison and Preston counties added more than 8,000 jobs between early-2010 and mid-2018, resulting in cumulative growth of more than 7 percent, according to the study.

In Harrison County, many of the new jobs can be attributed to rebounding natural gas production and natural gas pipeline infrastructure under construction, Deskins said. “That’s actually something that’s creating benefits in other counties in the state as well, not just the North Central region,” he said. “But definitely the construction projects that have been going on have definitely helped employment and a whole host of economic measures here in North Central.,” he said. “There is lots of stuff going on with the pipeline construction. That’s in Harrison County, and it’s affecting other parts of our region, as well.”

Sherry Rogers, executive director of the Lewis County Chamber of Commerce, said Lewis County has also experienced positive economic gains over the last year, mainly due to increased natural gas pipeline construction in the area. “There are some businesses that have seen an increase in their revenues due to the pipeline and the influx of pipeliners coming to the area and staying in the area,” she said. “Our retail and our restaurants have seen an increase due to that.” Several new businesses have recently opened their doors in and around Weston, Rogers said. “Here in Lewis County we have thriving entrepreneurship,” she said. “We’re comprised mostly of small businesses and we have some exciting new businesses that have opened that have opened this year or are opening.”

These include a retail shop in downtown Weston, a newly opened restaurant and a distillery, MannCave Distillery, Rodgers said. Patricia Henderson, director of the Taylor County Development Authority, said her county’s economy remains stable, partially do to continued coal mining activity. “Right now we are similar with the other areas in the state,” she said. “We do have a coal mine here, and that’s certainly helping us. Leer Mine still producing and moving a lot of coal through the railroad.” The county hopes to attract more oil and gas related companies to settle in the Taylor County area, Henderson said.

“We are trying to attract new businesses, and like all the other counties throughout the state, we are trying to recruit some of the oil and gas into our county,” she said. “In 2018, we had some property that the development authority marketed, and we did have an oil and gas company purchase that property to build some of their field offices. So we’re excited about that. That is a three-year plan.”

Taylor County recently became the recipient of a grant that will be used to perform a broadband internet study, Henderson said. “One of the problems that we hear a lot is the fact that we don’t have high speed internet in a lot of the areas of our county,” she said. “So we’ve got a grant to do a study that will help us to asses our needs and see where our underserved and unserved areas are so we can identify them. Then we can potentially go after some federal funds to help with that.”

Article By: Charles Young, WV News

Tag Archive: WV News

State Adds $70 Million Bridge to its Morgantown Industrial Park Connectivity Plans

West Virginia Commerce Dept., Development Office continues economic development hot streak

8,000 Jobs Added Within Past Decade in North Central WV

North Central West Virginia continues to lead the state in economic progress, according to local experts.

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