By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Bowling Green is no longer holding out for big businesses in the Bellard Business Park.
Officials are shifting gears to allow smaller businesses to build in the acreage located at the southeast corner of Brim and Bishop roads. The 23.5-acre park will now be split up into smaller lots – rather than waiting for big users.
The shift will make the business park easier to market, according to Sue Clark, director of the city’s economic development commission.
“I keep getting requests for one- or two-acre lots,” Clark said after the Bowling Green Board of Public Utilities meeting last week.
The city still has plenty of larger lots available for manufacturers in the Woodbridge industrial park off Dunbridge Road, Clark said.
“I want to save the east lots for the bigger users,” she said.
The board of public utilities supported the efforts and voted Monday to split off 2.2 acres in the southwest corner of the Bellard Business Park.
Clark already has a buyer for the lot. Schwind Electric Co. has agreed to pay $60,000 for the site.
“It definitely would open up some opportunities for different customers,” Brian O’Connell, the city’s public utilities director, said about the shift toward smaller lots.
At one time, there was a plan to construct a new city electric division facility on the north side of the Bellard park. However, there is no longer a plan to do that, O’Connell said. The property has been maintained as farmland, with the city receiving farm rent revenues.
O’Connell said he supports the splitting up the Bellard park into smaller lots to accommodate smaller businesses. The recent expansion of the Woodbridge Business Park, plus the 36.9 acres the city economic development foundation owns near Brim and Newton roads, allow plenty of room for larger users, he said.
The city may still reserve about four acres in the northwest corner of the Bellard park for a potential electric substation or switch yard in the future.
As in the past, the city will receive $10,000 per acre from the sale to Schwind as a credit on the city’s future community development foundation dues. O’Connell said this practice helps the foundation continue its mission of economic development, job creation and electric load growth.
Also at the board of public utilities meeting, the board:
- Heard the work on Rosalind and Donbar is dragging on, with the crews encountering a lot of rock.
- Learned the wastewater treatment plant had two combined sewer overflows this month. The overflows have to be reported to the Ohio EPA within four hours of occurring.
- Voted to purchase water meter reading equipment.
- Learned that the new pump station on Conneaut Avenue is up and running. Crews were hoping to get the asphalt done last week.
