November 15, 2016
By Paul Joseph, Paragon Communications News Director –
Three area companies were chosen through a bidding process to get started on Clinton’s new industrial park.
Clinton City Manager Mark Skiles says bids for various pieces of the work that is necessary were opened about a month ago. He says they had to wait on the US Economic Development Authority because they had to approve them since the authority gave the city a federal grant that will pay half of the construction costs.
Skiles says the park, Commerce Industrial Park, is comprised of about 40 acres of land on the south side.
The four contracts authorized total about $1.26-million dollars. The grant will be worth about half that or about $632-thousand dollars with the city paying the same for the work.
Skiles says the park has 23 lots in it plus two that are facing Commerce Industrial Park that were sold previously. They already have businesses on them.
Work on the rest of the land is expected to begin soon.
The idea for the park came from former City Manager Steve Hewitt back in 2013, so the city has been considering the idea for a while, however, it was put on a back burner while the Clinton tackled a bigger issue, that of water and that’s pretty well in hand now.
The purpose of the industrial park is to encourage more jobs to relocate to Western Oklahoma and to Clinton.
The money to pay for the city’s share of the park construction will come from the Clinton Economic Development Fund which is comprised of part of the city’s sales tax revenue specifically committed to economic development.
Each of the winning contractors are allowed 90 days to complete their part of the work equating to about a year for the completion of the whole project.
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