Lowndes County supervisors agreed to match a grant that will fund paving and extending Charleigh D. Ford Jr. Drive during their meeting Friday.
Supervisors will contribute $150,000 previously returned from a loan to a $500,000 grant awarded by the Tennessee Valley Authority and $100,000 from the Lowndes County Industrial Development Authority to finance the work.
The loan was for the former spec building that CalStar is currently repurposing into a sustainable material manufacturing plant. Golden Triangle Development Link CEO Joe Max Higgins said the Link is pursuing another deal with Agracel on a second spec building that would likely locate at the site where the road would extend in the GTR Global Industrial Aerospace Park.
The paved portion of the road currently ends at the intersection of Raymond Road and turns into gravel. It curves left onto the park site which now has water and sewer infrastructure installed. Higgins said the site will be more attractive to prospects if the gravel road extension is upgraded to a two-lane paved entry. As more companies locate there in the long term, the road can be expanded to a four-lane, Higgins said.
“This will be similar to what you see in highway construction where they build two lanes, operate on it for a while and as the need exists we expand it,” Higgins said. “It will go down past the new water tank.”
Higgins added that Lowndes County was one of only a few communities in TVA’s service area to receive the grant.
In other business, the board approved the following requests:
■ A $146,307.19 in invoices for the Mississippi Steel Processing plant expansion;
■ A $ 470,948.64 in invoices for CalStar building and site work;
■ A change order for the CalStar project increasing the total cost by $34,601.90 to $1,996,375.92;
■ A utility permit from Caledonia Natural Gas District for a 3/4 inch service line bore on Wolfe Trail Road.
Nathan Gregory covers city and county government for The Dispatch.
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