(Wise, VA) — The Tobacco Commission has signed off on a half million dollar grant for a key component at the Berry Hill Mega Park.
The money will help pay for the engineering and design of an improved natural gas gate to serve the Southern Virginia Megasite. Last fall, the Commission approved a 25 million-dollar loan for the project. It will connect Berry Hill to the nearby TransCo Williams gas Pipeline.
Danville Delegate Danny Marshall chairs the Commission’s Incentive and Loans Committee. He says the loan won’t be offered until there’s an industry ready to move in, and the industry would would pay back the loan. “Once a company that needs that expanded gas capacity comes in, they will pay a little bit extra per cubic feet of gas used in order to pay the loan back to the Commission,” Marshall said. There is a three-year sunset clause on the loan, contingent upon an industry moving into the park.
Marshall says an expanded gas gate could be crucial in luring a transformative project to the region. “We didn’t want to go in and put in a gas gate that might be too big or too small without knowing what would locate at the Mega Park,” Marshall said. “We wanted it to fit the park. We wanted to make sure that we only had to put in one gas gate.”
Tobacco Commission member Will Pace of Chatham says last summer developers were working with a prospect that would have needed better gas access than the park currently has. “Because of their request for natural gas, both the Regional Industrial Facility Authority and the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance felt that it was important to provide natural gas at Berry Hill and the Tobacco Commission agreed,” Pace said.
Marshall says the park’s location helps make the investment worthwhile. “We have the TransCo pipeline that runs right beside the Mega Park. It runs from Texas to New England. So we have an abundant supply of natural gas right next door to us,” Marshall said.
Berry Hill has finished just out of the running for some large projects in just the past few years. More than $200 million has been spent the past 15 years to make the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill the largest industrial park in the Southeast.