Go Back to News

More measured growth is expected

Sunday, July 20, 2008

By STEVE DOYLE

Times Staff Writer steve.doyle@htimes.com

Despite losing Volkswagen to Chattanooga, Huntsville leaders are steaming ahead with a multimillion-dollar plan to improve roads and other key infrastructure in the newly annexed Greenbrier area of Limestone County.

"It doesn't change our plans at all," Huntsville Planning Director Dallas Fanning said last week.

"That may be the finest industrial site in North Alabama, and it's now had a substantial amount of exposure to the economic development community. There's still great prospects for that whole area to grow."

Fanning said city officials committed to upgrading roads and sewer lines in that part of Limestone long before VW showed interest in Greenbrier. The city's capital plan calls for spending about $22 million starting in 2012 to widen Greenbrier Road, Swancott Road and Old Alabama 20.

Other improvements are on a faster track.

Twelve newly hired police officers will begin patrolling the area in August. An Atlanta-based contractor soon will start installing a major sewer line along Beaver Dam Creek. And in 2009, Huntsville Fire & Rescue hopes to break ground on a $3.5 million fire station near Greenbrier.

"We've got existing neighborhoods out there that need additional coverage," said Rex Reynolds, the city's public safety director. "If VW had become a reality, we probably would have had a two-engine company out there. Now, we might just need a one-engine company."

Huntsville previously annexed hundreds of acres along Interstate 565 in Limestone, including the Target distribution center site. But the pace picked up in March with a flurry of annexations that brought another 4,748 acres into the city limits.

Most of the newly annexed property is farmland belonging to the Dr. John Sewell and Albert McDonald families. Volkswagen was eyeing 1,300 acres owned by the Sewells for its first U.S. automotive plant.

For now, the 22 square miles of Huntsville in Limestone has more cotton plants than people. The area's 2007 population was 1,125, according to the U.S. Census.

Fanning said the area would have exploded if VW had come. Growth will still happen, he said Friday, but it will probably be "more measured."

"It's flat land, and it'll be easily developed," he said. "The housing market needs to get straightened out, but as those things happen you'll see the demand go up for residential as well as industrial and commercial."

Madison-based developer Joe Murphy agrees.

He said VW's rejection of Greenbrier did not dampen his enthusiasm for building homes on the Limestone side of the city of Madison. In fact, Murphy said he's moving forward with a subdivision called Greenbrier Crossing on Powell Road. Homes are expected to sell for $350,000 to $450,000.

"I bought that land in November, before VW was even on the horizon, and we've always been very bullish on this project," Murphy said last week.

"The plant would have been a windfall ... but when it didn't happen, it didn't really bother me that much."

Murphy said VW likely was scared away by the Madison County Commission's refusal to raise sales taxes to help local schools, and the Alabama Department of Transportation's "reluctance to adequately assist our county with the roads we need to accommodate BRAC" job transfers to Redstone Arsenal.

The state's roughly $400 million incentives package for VW included rebuilding the Greenbrier Road exit on I-565 as a cloverleaf design to eliminate left turns. Johnny Harris, a division engineer with the state Transportation Department, said that's probably off the table for now.

"I don't think there will be a need for any immediate improvements," he said.

"Of course, I understand the site is still going to be offered for development, and I'm sure the state and the department will be involved in any future improvements in that area."

The Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce paid for an environmental study of the Sewell tract as part of its VW courtship, Fanning said. Workers using radar found an old cemetery that would need to be relocated if a large industry comes, he said, but found no other problems that would prevent development of the site.

"The site is a natural, and (development) will happen," Fanning said.

"It's very hard to find a 1,000-acre tract in North Alabama that's got close proximity to two interstates, a rail spur and really has no environmental issues."