CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Governor-elect Jim Justice is on board the Rock Creek Development Park project that would transform the former Hobet surface mine into an industrial park on 12,000 acres on the Boone and Lincoln county line.
Justice’s chief of staff, Nick Casey, appeared at a joint press conference touting the project with outgoing Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.
“Governor-elect is as proud of this project as our governor is of this project,” Casey said at the gathering of officials from both administrations in the governor’s reception room.
“Once you get a chance to look at the opportunities this presents not just for southern West Virginia, but for Charleston and the entire region it’s really overwhelming in a very, very positive way.”
Tomblin announced the project almost exactly a year ago in his final State of the State address: “We are also proposing to develop the largest industrial site in West Virginia history at the former Hobet surface mine in Boone and Lincoln counties. With 12,000 acres located just off Corridor G, this site is large enough to fit virtually every major economic development project in recent history – including Toyota, Procter & Gamble, Gestamp, Macy’s, Amazon and more – with thousands of acres left over.”
Since then, the Logan County native has made Hobet — now Rock Creek — his pet project. Even during his farewell address on Wednesday, Tomblin described developing the vision for Rock Creek many years ago as he rode his 4-wheeler around southern West Virginia.
At the joint press conference today, Tomblin said, “I’m grateful to have the support of Governor-elect Jim Justice as I pass the torch for this project that means so much to me and will give so much back to the hardworking men and women of southern West Virginia.”
During the election cycle, Justice talked often about thinking big but did not specifically discuss Rock Creek.
So today’s passing of the torch on the project wasn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion.
Casey said it wasn’t a tough sell to persuade Justice of the project’s value.
“It’s an easy project to scratch your head about if you don’t know the area and don’t know what it can do. Once you inform yourself about it and get the guidance of some of these folks who have put together the kind of perspective you can see, it’s hard not to get behind this project so Governor-elect Justice is enthusiastic about this project.”
Tomblin’s staff and Casey said the biggest merit of the project is its sheer size. The property, said to be the size of Huntington, constitutes a rare amount of flat land all in one place, they emphasized.
“The one thing we’ve learned, the number one reason people don’t come to West Virginia for big projects is they don’t have a site they can get to,” Casey said. “If there’s no site, there’s no opportunity.”
Casey continued, “It’s a big property with big opportunities, and I think the Justice administration’s perspective is, you’ve got to think big. This is big.”
RockCreek (Hobet) https://t.co/Z2SB6M0ns0
— Brad McElhinny (@BradMcElhinny) January 12, 2017
One of the first hurdles for the project is accessibility. Development will require the construction of a 2.6 mile four-lane highway from the U.S. Route 119-Route 3 intersection in Boone County up to the former Hobet mountaintop removal mining site,
In November, the Kentucky firm Bizzack Construction came in with the low bid of $57.8 million. In late November, the state Division of Highways secured $58 million in funding after closing on Garvee bonds specifically for the project. Those bonds, Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle, are an option used by states to secure funding for highway projects quickly with the promise of federal funds to pay off the bonds.
Earlier this week, in a legislative hearing of the Joint Commission on Transportation Accountability, legislators asked Department of Highways leaders how the highway to Hobet leaped to the top of West Virginia’s transportation funding priorities. They also asked whether any other highways projects are being sacrificed for the Hobet highway.
Highways engineers said the project would be using money that could have been steered toward other road work but they said there’s no way to specify what particular road work would be bumped.
After the hearing, Delegate Marty Gearheart, the chairman of the committee, said he remains puzzled.
“It is curious that this project sort of rose from nowhere,” Gearheart said.
“We’re spending an astronomical amount of money — $60 million to develop road bed for 2.6 miles of road and then another $16 million to handle the paving. It’s a lot, a lot of money for as little discussion as there appears to have been. Then the financing appears to have been thrown together, put together very quickly, maybe not in the most expeditious fashion to preserve the taxpayers dollars.”
Geartheart said the committee started asking questions about six months ago.
“As opposed to slowing down and seeing what’s going on, it seems like it ramped up at a little higher speed. I think the project could be wonderful. I don’t know. I love the people of Boone County. I know they’ve had a lot of difficulty, and if the site has the potential that’s being reported then this could be a wonderful thing. But I’m not certain that we have been prudent in how we’ve pushed it forward.”
Representatives of both the Tomblin and Justice administrations said they believe the project will prove valuable, although the payoff might be delayed.
“If you are anticipating immediate gratification from this project, you are destined to be disappointed,” said Keith Burdette, the outgoing Commerce secretary in the Tomblin administration. “This is a multigeneration development project. It will grow and expand as the opportunity presents itself. It has the real potential to change the dynamics, to really change the game in this region of southern West Virginia.