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Union County Judge Bobby Edmonds said that he has no plans to bid on the dirt moving project at the proposed site for El Dorado’s new business park on Champagnolle Road. You may recall that more than 900,000 cubic yards of dirt need to be leveled there before the 300-acre plot can be made “site ready” for a prospective tenant.

The county had offered to do the dirt work at cost, meaning that fuel, equipment and manpower would all be covered by the county budget. The estimate for the at cost work had been in the neighborhood of just over $700,000.

The El Dorado City Council decided that it would be better to bid the project out and invited the county to be part of the bidding process.

However, Edmonds said that after thinking it over, he didn’t feel comfortable committing to a specific figure just yet. He also felt like tying up the county’s workers and equipment could possibly hinder ongoing roadwork.

The offer, he said, would still be on the table if the bidding process fails. Estimates on the project, if handled by a private contractor, range from $2.5 million to $5 million. The money will come from the El Dorado Forward 1-cent sales tax initiative.

The Union County Industrial Board purchased the land in 2004 with $1 million left over from a defunct county housing authority, according to El Dorado Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Don Wales.

Wales said that after the Union County Housing Facilities Board ceased operations, the money was transferred to the UCIB, which purchased the land from five different owners.

Critics contend that the land purchase was unneeded. And residents like Todd Graves, who voiced his disapproval at the July 28 El Dorado City Council meeting, are beginning to ask tough questions of city leaders.

“How can y’all sit here and suggest spending $750,000 — that’s the estimate — to fill a hole that shouldn’t have been bought in the first place…” Graves said, referring to the county’s original proposal to move the dirt at cost.

Wales contends that the land is needed if the county is to have any hopes of landing a major industrial business like a distribution center. In 2003, Wal-Mart indicated that they were “very interested” in building a distribution center in El Dorado, but after Wales showed executives several unsuitable sites, they decided to construct in Louisiana.

Wales added that Wal-Mart’s representatives were interested in the 300-acre tract on Champagnolle that’s now owned by the county, but at that time, the land was still privately owned.

“This is a perfect place for a distribution center,” Wales said. “I got out with the guy from Wal-Mart, and we walked the site, and he loved it. Problem was, I didn’t have the land at that time to offer them.”

Wales said it took several years for the UCIB to convince two of the land owners to sell. Family trusts and cranky landowners holding out until the 11th hour apparently gummed up the process.

Wales remains hopeful that once the site is prepared, another business, perhaps even Wal-Mart, may be interested in building a distribution center there.

Updates to come.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 4:40 pm and is filed under By John Worthen, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.