Lake Barkley Economic Development Director Amanda Davenport provided an update about the Pennyrile WestPark site at the Caldwell County Fiscal Court meeting Tuesday morning.
Davenport explained to magistrates that several years ago in the early 2000s there was a 500-acre parcel of property that was contained north of the prison farm in Lyon County along KY 641 for industrial development.
click to download audioIn the mid-2000s, she added that mega-sites fell out of fashion and companies were looking for smaller projects and didn’t really want large tracts of land. Davenport said fast forward to the last two or three years mega-sites are back in fashion and companies are wanting large tracts of land for huge projects. She noted that Pennyrile WestPark is a very unique site for all of western Kentucky.
click to download audioDavenport said they have started exploring developing the site. She noted that in 2018 the entire site was put in a flood plain by FEMA. She added that she had an informal meeting with all of the judge-executives last week and everyone agreed they would like to look at more engineering studies to figure out why the property was put into a flood plain in 2018 and why it wasn’t in a flood plain prior to that year.
They are also looking into reapplying for a Product Development Grant that would be for a regional project.
click to download audioAs part of the re-establishing of the WestPark Industrial Authority Board, Davenport asked for the fiscal court to appoint someone to serve on the board. District 2 Magistrate Jeff Boone was appointed to serve in the role.
