NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Board of County Commissioners approved disbursing funds for a new industrial park south of South Hutchinson at their meeting on Wednesday.
"Last year, Growth Inc., a separate entity but managed by the Chamber, was able to use our own internal funding, through some other gifts and pledges from donors, to acquire 154 acres on K-96 for the future development," said Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber CEO Debra Teufel.
Growth Inc. will now receive ARPA funds in the amount of $1.2 million for the development of a K-96 industrial park that is in an unincorporated area of Reno County. The Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber also received $2 million from the State of Kansas' Base Grant 2.0 for the project. Teufel sees a great opportunity for return on the county's investment, but they have to get water to the site.
"In order to really ready a site that could be prepared for projects that require 200, 300, perhaps even 400 or more acres, we have started engineering studies to make sure, what are the infrastructure requirements and the ability to extend infrastructure. There was the question about water. We've had several meetings between the intergovernmental agencies to talk about water service to this site and the other projects that you have on your radar that were mentioned earlier with Yoder and HABIT. Initially, some of those discussions were about infrastructure that could be one combined line. Then, I think it became evident the timeline to get water to Yoder was so imminent that would need to move forward. It's probably a smaller sized line than would be required for industry. Hutchinson, the city of Hutchinson has been at the table talking about this as well and starting their own studies about their own water rights and how much water they have that they could sell to an industrial park of this nature that would be outside their city boundaries."
Part of what the county money will go for is the engineering to figure out where the water line can go and also, it's possible some of it could be used to buy more land.
"As we are able to attract industry, our goal is then that the industry would purchase the ground, which then would reimburse the money that we've already put into that first piece of the development, could potentially reimburse for land that could be acquired with these funds and that really could then be used as a driver for the future," Teufel said. "None of these dollars are being used for staffing costs. All of it is for site development and it will be an asset that yes, can be monetized to the sale of industry and really create a return. The projects in the pipeline that are looking at Reno County right now, we have submitted on several, but they are in the scale of billion dollar investments. We've talked about what could that mean to the property tax base of Reno County and the communities involved and it's hard to make predictions, but some of the projects alone, valuation of the project would be greater than the whole valuation of Hutchinson today."
The approval for the funding was unanimous.
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