News about business attraction, job creation, and economic impact studies

BDC Provides Briefing to Economic Development Commission

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“It seemed appropriate that the county’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) was at the Donaldson Brown Center to hear a talk about the development of Bainbridge.

Brown was a financial titan of his era and the mansion, perched on a cliff with breathtaking views of the Susquehanna River, is a testament to his prestige and love of this area. From what I have heard about him, Brown would have loved this challenge.

Bainbridge Development Corporation (BDC) executive director Donna Tapley said she is looking for the support and energy of the EDC to help make Bainbridge a priority economic development site in the county.

As the economy has improved, there have been more prospects tapping on Bainbridge’s door to look at the enormous, undeveloped site. Unfortunately, infrastructure issues, lack of incentives and the need to get the U.S. Navy to settle on continuing pollution problems have made it difficult to get anyone to sign on the dotted line.

Tapley said one of the partner developers even brought a prospect exclusively to Bainbridge, but the same prospect was working through the state and was directed to another site in Cecil County. County Economic Development Director Lisa Webb explained that prospects are assigned different names by economic development entities to allow companies to freely look at options without setting off alarms where they currently base their business so the county office had no idea the BDC and county economic development office were working with the same company.

But the BDC wants to get an equal footing in order to set the hook and reel-in prospects. They are actively looking into Enterprise Zone status for Bainbridge as well as a designation of a Sustainable Community. Both come with incentives for those companies that settle there.

The BDC also has plans to increase the sewer capacity and add sewer pipes. They will look for funding sources.

Artesian Water, which offers water within Port Deposit’s town limits, has said they can get 240,000 gallons of water to the serve the site within 60 days, if needed, Tapley said.

The Navy was given a revised appraisal which is being reviewed.

While some may lament that it seems that it is taking forever for the Navy to act, Tapley said the Navy is being very responsive.

“The Navy exceeds their usual pace with this,” she said.

One of the things the BDC is trying to get across to the Navy is that the community has suffered losses because of the initial lack of movement to get rid of pollution problems and the time that has elapsed since new pollution issues were discovered by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2010. Tapley said these include the town needing to turn their water resources to a private company, the loss of a partner who was rehabbing the old Tome School and the loss of Cecil College’s math and tech building which was slated to be constructed on the Bainbridge site, but had to be moved to the North East campus or the college would have lost funding for the project.

Throughout this long process with the Navy, the BDC decided they needed to revise their concept for the site. They first wanted to get Bainbridge to be more of a research and development facility, but have broadened their vision to include distribution and manufacturing.

This new plan was unveiled before Port Deposit’s town board in January and presented to the County Executive and Cecil County Council in February. Tapley said the BDC is now working with the town to modify their comprehensive plan and zoning to work with the new concept.

Tapley said the BDC views the arson at the Tome School’s Memorial Hall as being catastrophic, but vows the site will someday be rehabilitated and put to good use. Anyone who takes on the project will find that 100 acres of land around the historic school is included in the deal.

Tapley said she is before the EDC to get ideas and encouragement for Bainbridge’s development. It is the same reason that the town of Port Deposit is planning informational signs in the downtown and why there are regular tours of the site – to get the buzz going about the possibilities at Bainbridge.

Bainbridge is at a critical point, Tapley told the EDC. She expressed optimism that the BDC’s plans will result in Bainbridge becoming an economic asset to Cecil County.”

New Industrial Vision Unveiled for Bainbridge

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By: Cheryl Mattix and Jane Bellmyer, Cecil Whig

Photo by Cheryl Mattix

Bainbridge Development Corporation and developers for the 1,200- acre former U.S. Navy base unveiled a new, more industrial vision for the property Tuesday to Cecil County Council.

At the same time, they reached out to the county to help them get 600 feet of new sewer line extended from the property to the county-owned sewage treatment plant in Port Deposit.

“Sewer line extension is critical to move this forward,” said Ken Michaels, a development partner for Bainbridge, along with John Paterakis and Richard Alter.

“This would allow us to actively market the property,” BDC Chairman Michael R. Pugh added.

“We all need to work together to get this connection done,” he said, calling it “the single most important issue right now.”

Michaels said his best guess is that officials could start development at Bainbridge by the end of this year, depending on a settlement with the Navy and meeting their water and sewer needs.

Original development plans announced about seven years ago included a mixed-use development of residential, office, retail and industrial usage, but soil contamination discovered over the entire site a few years ago has prompted the developers to take a different look at their plans.

This new vision is primarily commercial and industrial usage with only 150 acres at the former Tome School site set aside for a mixture of office, educational and residential uses.

“Our original vision is un-doable now because of the amount of mitigation needed for residential development,” Pugh said.

The new vision is thought to be more practical and less costly by those involved.

“It’s more short-term achievable,” Pugh said.

BDC leadership has been negotiating with the U.S. Navy for the last few years to find a way to clean up the site, pay for it and redevelop the 1,200 acres into a viable taxable use, which would also create jobs and boost the economy.

Port Deposit Mayor Wayne Tome likes the new plan, which was presented to the town council a week earlier.

“We’re going to work with the Bainbridge Development Corporation to resurrect it,” Tome said Tuesday. “We’ve already been talking about it.”

One of the first projects for the town is to change its comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance to include this new concept, which scales back houses in favor of industry. The town also has to annex a small portion of land that was missed 20 years ago when a majority of the Bainbridge was annexed into town limits.

“We’re looking at light industrial, straight up to warehouse distribution,” Michaels said.

“We’ve had at least six new seriously interested prospects,” said Donna Tapley, executive director of the BDC, indicating that they lost a “really good food distributor prospect.”

Michaels confirmed the loss, saying the prospect needed to move quickly and needed a water and sewer promise, which the developers were not able to make.

He told the county council Tuesday that his development group is moving ahead with an economic feasibility study for the new vision.

“Industrial use generates one heck-of-an income and a lot of taxes,” said Michaels, who has been in the real estate development business in Maryland for more than 50 years. “You’ll be flabbergasted.”

Tome said he is prepared to work with the developer to make the new plan a reality. What he doesn’t want, however, is for the property to become nothing but warehouses.

“We want some high-tech companies in there,” he said. “There’s still potential for some of that.”

For Tome, productivity is the key to the success of the project.

“The site is not producing any jobs, it’s not producing any tax revenue,” he said. “I’m tired of the ups and downs.”

Michaels said he believes Bainbridge is “the perfect place for an industrial park.”

“It’s got electric, gas, railroad, water and access to Interstate 95,” he said. “What else can you ask for?”

The development partners for the bulk of Bainbridge have no contractual obligation to the formerTome School site, Pugh explained to the county council.

“We set aside 100 acres to accompany the 50 acres of Tome School as an ancillary parcel to make it more attractive to a developer. Under any scenario, this site will require some heavy lifting,” Pugh said.

In the short-term, the BDC and the development team hopes to attract commercial industrial users to the site, admitting they have more hoops to go through, but they feel it is a viable solution.

BDC Provides Tome School Update

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“We are still actively working with the State Fire Marshall’s Office on their investigation of the fire at Memorial Hall. We cannot comment on the investigation at this time but when there is a public update available, we will certainly provide that right away.

We are also working with the Deputy Fire Marshall and the Cecil County Sheriff’s Office to find the best solution for the ongoing security issues at Bainbridge.

We recently completed our semi-annual operations and maintenance inspection at the property. The report came back quite favorable. The only requested repairs to be made, are to the breaches in the fencing along 276. We have been focusing our property maintenance efforts on repairing the breaches along the entire property line and have made excellent progress in the past two months. Inspections are performed following the repairs and then we proceed to check the breaches to see if they are staying closed. We are very pleased to report that the repairs are holding and we are now working on closures along 276.

While Memorial Hall is something of great importance to the Town of Port Deposit, Cecil County and the BDC, we unfortunately do not have an update to provide at this time. We are still evaluating options for moving forward.”

-Provided by Toni Lozzi, Project Coordinator