The potential for the addition of new manufacturing businesses in Poplar Bluff grew Monday morning with the announcement of the purchase of land for a new industrial park.
“We’ve been working on this for four years. It’s exciting stuff,” said Greater Poplar Bluff Area Chamber of Commerce President Steve Halter.
Halter announced Poplar Bluff Industries has purchased 54 acres near the current industrial park on the city’s south side.
The city’s longtime industrial park encompasses 160 acres with seven manufacturers, while a second, newer location on South 11th Street holds two more factories.
“We are out of land and space in the industrial park, so we created a second industrial park on the hill for Empire Comfort Systems and Primo Grills,” Halter explained. “We’ve also maximized that space, so we needed additional ground, and we purchased these 54 acres.”
Poplar Bluff Industries is the “economic arm of the chamber,” Halter said. “We buy land and buildings and build buildings to attract manufacturers, and almost every manufacturer that’s been in the industrial park at one time or another, we’ve had a hand in.”
The new acreage was purchased from the former Hydro Adventures Water Park, Halter said, though it does not include the actual park property.
“We did not want the park and have to spend money tearing buildings down,” he said.
The new land, Halter said, is not in a flood zone, something he said is a “rarity” in that region.
It’s also “close to all the amenities in the industrial park,” he said.
Poplar Bluff already has a strong manufacturing base, but the additional acreage, Halter said, has the potential to add more growth.
“It’s tough to grow your community if you don’t have buildings or land to do it, but we are very blessed in our area. We’ve got more than double the national average in manufacturing,” he explained.
“We do have a lot of manufacturing here, and we are blessed to continue to go strong with a lot of manufacturing,” he added.
The focus of Poplar Bluff Industries and the Chamber, Halter said, now will be to market the new land to potential businesses.
“We’re excited about it … just to have something in our arsenal. Now we go into recruiting mode. We’ve actually got a piece of property now to market to manufacturers,” Halter said.
That work, he said, already has begun.
“We’ve already had the opportunity to get in front of some companies with it,” Halter said.