New industrial park is still planning on moving forward

STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI)- A place for manufacturing and distribution is the hope for Oktibbeha County and the City of Starkville.

Plans are underway to create a new industrial park.

The Starkville Board of Alderman is teaming up with OCEDA and the Oktibbeha County Board to take a look at how the new industrial park is coming along.

Joe Max Higgins Jr., the CEO of the Golden Triangle Development LINK, says everything is on schedule despite a few setbacks including the zoning of the land which is being settled in court.

“We’ve got multiple paths forward that I think we can get where we need to go. The good news is 80 acres of the almost 400 acres is already zoned C2, and we can do distribution in there, and we’re working on some companies that will do that and meet our goal of paying well to get them in there even before the zoning case is over,” said Higgins.

They currently can’t commit with any manufacturing companies due to the case.

“It’s zoned industrial right now, but you don’t want to locate a company out there with it zoned industrial and then find out six months later that the zoning is changed and they can’t be there. You would have to fully disclose that to a client, and that wouldn’t be acceptable. So, we need to get that zoning case dealt with before we can put manufacturing out there,” said Higgins.

If everything works out, Oktibbeha County and the City of Starkville will be seeing more jobs.

“There’s a lot a things that we’ve got going on in our community. As you can tell from the discussion around the table, we’re trying to make us a place where people want to live so that those businesses that come here have a reason to bring their employees here and feel like this is somewhere that is going to be conducive to their success as well as ours. That’s all a part of what we’re looking at as we’re making our way through these decisions,” said Mayor Lynn Spruill.

A 4 County Electric substation is already in the works. The next step for the park is to get water and sewer put in.