GAINESVILLE – The City of Gainesville plans to create a new business park because the city of Gainesville is running out of building sites for new businesses.
On Wednesday the announcement was made by Governor Nathan Deal’s office that Fox Factory Holding secured one of the last remaining parcels in the city-owned Industrial Park West development. Fox plans to invest over $50-million into the 23-acre site and create 800 jobs in the process.
The following day, Tim Evans, Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce Vice President of Economic Development, told the city council at their Thursday morning work session, “There’s very little inventory in the city of Gainesville remaining. We’re pretty much out of inventory again.”
Evans spoke of possible future businesses wanting to locate in Gainesville, and existing businesses wanting to expand their operations: “If we don’t have a place for them to grow in our community they’ll have to look elsewhere.”
Gainesville City Manager Bryan Lackey agreed with Evans, saying that the city was essentially out of industrial development sites. He told the city council, “So we’ve decided to embark now on our next business park. Gainesville’s got a rich history of industrial parks, five within the city that are all used up now.”
With that said, Lackey displayed an aerial view of 1,300 city-owned acres between U.S.129 and SR 60, and southeast of I-985. It abuts the Allen Creek Soccer Complex and encompasses Fullenwider Road.
“It’s a bad answer for Tim to tell people, ‘We wish we could have you but no room; go somewhere else,’” Lackey said of Evans efforts to attract business to Hall County. “We don’t want to turn away people if they’re wanting to be in our community.”
“Right now we’ll call it the ‘Gainesville 85 Business Park’,” Lackey said, adding that the name is just temporary and likely will be changed at a later date.
“Again, I want to stress to you that this is city owned,” Lackey said emphatically. “We’re not buying any property or proposing to buy any property.”
Lackey then answered an obvious question before it was asked. “If you wonder why we own 1,300-acres on the south side of our city, the city purchased this around 1990…there was a rush by lots of local municipal organizations, including Gainesville, to find lots of land.”
Lackey explained that the Georgia Environmental Protection Division told communities thirty years ago that future sewer treatment would only be allowed with the use of spray fields, places where treated waste would be distributed (sprayed) and allowed to filter through the soil.
“Luckily the state and the feds came around shortly after that and realized that was not such a great idea, maybe we need to grow sewer treatment plants instead of spraying the sewerage on raw land, but we (already) had this 1300-acres.”
Lackey said plans for the new industrial park included relocating both the Public Works and the Water Resources departments together in the proposed complex, as their current facilities were aging and in need of updates. “We’re going to be the first tenants of this facility moving forward.”
Lackey added that a creek runs through the acreage so an ecological emphasis would be part of the industrial park’s design, including public walking trails. “There’s a lot of environmental features of this that we figure will be attractive to companies as they grow…an existing lake…and at the bottom end a nice waterfall.”
Council woman Barbara Brooks said she was excited about a parklike component being part of the development. “I’ve very happy to see some type of preservation on the south end of Gainesville. This is exciting to me. I think the public is going to put pressure on y’all to get this done.”
