Upgrades Coming To Industrial Park
$600K to help rebuild North Guernsey section
BELLAIRE — North Guernsey Street within the North Bellaire Industrial Park is getting a $600,000 rebuild with an eye toward future development there.
Ohio Rep. Jack Cera, D-Bellaire, announced Tuesday the State Controlling Board has approved a $150,000 Roadway Development Grant for the Belmont County Port Authority to assist efforts with the project — which is expected to cost about $607,000, according to Larry Merry, executive director of the port authority.
North Guernsey Street runs through the Bellaire Industrial Park, and work to rebuild the road is to begin at the end of the exit ramp from Ohio 7 into the park and proceed north toward Bellaire Harbor. About a mile of road is to be reconstructed, including reclamation, repaving and striping.
The work is expected to take two months, with the full project being completed by the end of the year.
Bids for the project are to be opened when the Belmont County Port Authority Board meets at 8 a.m. Thursday in the board office, located in the former Thoburn Church building behind the Belmont County Courthouse.
The road expansion is needed as traffic has increased within the park, according to Merry.
Muxie Distribution recently constructed a new, 68,000 square-foot facility in the park, and the port authority is seeking a tenant for Muxie’s former facility. Among other businesses in the park, MPR is a transloading business that also sells sand to the fracking industry, while Lion Industries is a machine shop that fabricates parts needed for the mining industry.
Oxford Mining and Tri-Son Concrete also have homes in the Bellaire Industrial Park.
“We hope there is going to be additional job growth, and we are trying to take care of the many jobs that are up there … ,” Merry said. “There are only two places in the U.S. where 10,000 trucks pass each day, there is both a Class 1 and a Class 2 railroad and a major waterway. One of them is St. Louis — the other is the Ohio Valley.”
And locating in the Bellaire Industrial Park can prove attractive to incoming business because of its easy access to Ohio 7, he said.
Bellaire Administrator Scott Porter said the land in the industrial park is not owned by the village of Bellaire, but by the individual businesses there.
“This project initiated with the merchants there,” he said. “The road was deteriorating, and this is a good upgrade to handle the heavy loads. It was a long time coming, and this is a blessing to us.”
In addition to the State Controlling Board funds, remaining money needed for the project is coming from the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Ohio Department of Transportation, the city of Bellaire and the Belmont County Transportation Improvement District.
The port authority facilitated the paperwork for the grant from the controlling board.
Bellaire’s share of the $607,000 project cost is $75,000, according to Porter.
“That is very, very reasonable, and we spend that much every 10 years just maintaining the road,” he said. “This will be our hub as far as rail and river traffic. The harbor is always busy. We are blessed to have the other entities contribute.”
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