MORGANTOWN – You’ve heard of curb appeal.
But how about interstate appeal?
Enrout Properties, owner of the Morgantown Industrial Park, is continuing its efforts to lure major investment in Monongalia County.
It’s baiting the hook with 27 acres of prime real estate.
“We believe this is going to be the premier site in the industrial park,” Enrout’s Glenn Adrian said. “It’s the one you will see when you come across the Uffington Bridge going north. You’ll look over and it will be front and center. It will sit prominently when it’s finished.”
Enrout is seeking a contractor to begin preparing the site, which it purchased in 2020 for $350,000, according to the Monongalia County Assessor’s Office.
Known as the “Floyd Farm Pad” in reference to its previous owners, initial site work will require 48 acres to be cleared and 1.4 million yards of earth to be relocated to create the 27-acre pad.
Adrian said the pad will sit near the spot where the currently under-construction Morgantown Industrial Park access road spanning the Monongahela River will connect into the park.
“Then, obviously, when the Harmony Grove interchange gets done, then you will have the best of both worlds, either to get on 79 or cross over the bridge and get on 68 going east. It’s going to offer a lot of flexibility,” Adrian said. “And it’s a big site. It’s nearly as big as Mountaintop Beverage and Owens & Minor, at 27 acres. Just the fact of where it sits, it’s going to be very noticeable. You know, a lot of things about the park you can’t see unless you’re coming down from Grafton Road, but when this starts to develop right off 79, you’re going to see it. So, we hope it’s going to be the site that attracts another major employer to the area, because there’s a very limited supply of these types of sites in West Virginia.”
He went on to say the land isn’t being prepared with a specific tenant or tenants in mind.
“This is the last large site that we’ll probably be developing that was part of the entire master plan that brought Mountaintop Beverage. We have site availability, but we’re going to have sites available anywhere from four to 27 acres. We’re going to have a variety of sites to accommodate just about any size business,” Adrian said. “Now, I mean, we’re not going to be a data center. We don’t have anything that big, but certainly small manufacturing like Mountaintop and distribution warehousing like Owens & Minor, this site will accommodate very easily.”
Enrout is accepting bids until May 26. Once a contract for the project is in place, the work will be completed within 250 days.
“We just want to have it on the map,” Adrian said. “We want to make sure it’s on the West Virginia Economic Development Authority’s radar. We came to the point where we said, ‘The time is now. If they see it, they’ll believe it,’ because if there’s a company exploring opportunities to build, you want to be ready versus telling them it’s going to take eight months before the site is ready.”
