Informational meeting on business park

On February 28, representatives Darron Ammann and Katelyn Wolf from Bartlett & West, the firm hired to put together a master plan for the business park property purchased for the city, made the first public presentation on the plans for the park at the YMCA.

Bartlett & West were hired by the city in September to do a master planning and visioning process,  and to start looking at what makes sense for the layout of the business park. What concerns are there, are there flood plans, access, also what makes sense in terms of lot size and marketing?  According to Ammann the plans are at about the 50% stage, in the next meetings and stages some of the information to be addressed will be costs and the impacts of the park itself and what impact it has on the community, neighbors, and the surrounding area.

Right now the business park is divided into four different parcels ranging from thirty acres to 240 – when planning business parks, according to Ammann, they try to think in terms of creative, flexible, and unique. The city and the plans need to be able to be creative because a lot of the companies who may be looking at the land are headquartered in places that have never heard of Cameron, so need to be creative in ways to market to them so they want to come to Cameron. Need to be flexible, as some companies may come in and want a specific amount of ground, need to have some flexibility in the land divisions to provide for that if it arises. The unique is in looking at what Cameron and the surrounding areas have to offer to businesses that would make them want to locate to Cameron.

There are 380 total acres in the park , with several ponds on the property and part of the master plan is to be able to understand all the regulations concerning all the topography, including the wetlands.

The idea currently is to improve the road from BB into the land. According to Ammann, BB is in bad shape and cannot accommodate any kind of industrial traffic. Bartlett & West have had some meetings with key stakeholders, such as MoDot and they are interested in having more conversations with the city about the property and improvements which could be made.

Ammann said the best thing to do as planners is to do the best job possible to plan, but be flexible with the plans because no matter what plans are made, those interested in the property very likely will want something different.
There are plans in the first phase to get water, sewer, and electricity to the property- the estimated costs for that infrastructure and all possible phases will be in the next portions of planning.

Ammann presented the plans and business parks of other communities and said that a lot of what it happening in other communities is there are buildings built and vacant and companies can simply move in. So early in the process for Cameron the steering committee is thinking about places where pads could be placed on the property and where utilities might need to be placed. Just to get some pads placed on the property, there will be about a million and a half yards of dirt that will need to be moved.

Ammann addressed the question of why would Cameron spend so much money to put so much infrastructure in the ground and he said it is all about trying to attract businesses to Cameron, which will draw jobs and additional tax revenues.

There were questions asked of the audience about how many of the similar communities of how many have actually built vertical buildings. The other communities are all in different stages, some have built buildings and some are still in the dirt moving stages. Another question asked was about the costs of all the infrastructure and Ammann said more information on costs will come in the next phases.

Moving forward there will be more meetings with the Business Park Steering committee, with a tentative plan for another public meeting to present the plans including some of the costs on April 11, where a three dimensional fly through computer graphic of the proposed business park should be available.