Sun staff
Construction of the county’s South Afton Commerce Park is on track, but business agreements lag, according to project officials.
In February, it was announced that the Clermont County Community Improvement Corporation, Inc. had purchased 242 acres of land to build the commerce park at Half Acre Road and state Route 32 in Williamsburg Township in order to build a “business-ready” site for manufacturers.
In March, the CIC granted the Clermont County Transportation Improvement District management authority over all aspects of final design and construction for the commerce park’s public infrastructure, which includes installing road infrastructure, water and sewer lines, and putting in underground conduit for natural gas, electric and telecommunication lines.
The project is slated to be finished in summer 2017.
“It’s going very smooth. The contractor’s been right on top of things,” Jeremy Evans, traffic engineer at the Clermont County Engineer’s Office, said. “We’ve had no issues so far; it’s been good.”
The west side of the property is being developed first to take advantage of access to utility lines and the interchange from state Route 32.
The access road to the site has been built up to the gravel layer; project officials had set out to reach that point in the construction by the end of the year.
“We knew it would be too cold to pave by the time they got that far, but we at least wanted to have access so we could market the site,” Evans explained.
To that point, business interest in the commerce park has been sluggish, according to Andrew Kuchta, executive director and treasurer of the CIC.
“The last half of this year has been slow in terms of companies seriously looking at new sites and buildings,” he said. “As far as companies actually making those decisions to build a new building, and invest and add jobs, it’s been a very slow year across the whole state for that, and across the whole Midwest.”
Despite the setback, project officials are optimistic that the economy will pick up in 2017, according to Kuchta.
“We’re excited to have the gravel down in a couple weeks so we can drive prospects out onto it over the winter,” he said, adding, “We haven’t been this ready for new investment in easily over a decade, so we’re very excited.”