HARTFORD, S.D. (KELO) — Before long, the city of Hartford will welcome new businesses to a new industrial park on the north end of town. Mounds of dirt and piles of rock are the results of over a year’s worth of work to develop the North Oaks Industrial Park.
“With the start of this 42-acre industrial park, it gives us an opportunity to be shovel ready and have businesses and industries able to move into Hartford and get up and running in a quicker time,” Hartford Mayor Arden Jones said.
The city of Hartford and the Hartford Area Development Foundation held a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday morning to celebrate the progress. With the help of the Economic Development Administration, the city received an initial grant of $1.9 million. Jones said the final project was lower, costing about $1.5 million.
“It’s a match project. The city share is somewhere around $180 to 200,000. But boy, when you can get this kind of infrastructure built in a town our size for a couple hundred thousand, that’s huge,” Jones said.
Nearby businesses, like the Hartford Building Center, are excited, too. Operations manager Travis Hellvig hopes to gain some new customers and neighbors in the process.
“More people in town, more jobs keeping more people here. And obviously for us with being a lumberyard hardware store, anything that’s a new development is especially exciting for us because we hope that means some business partners,” Hellvig said.
The park is expected to be completed this fall. Mayor Jones hopes by this time next year, some businesses will already be up.
“It’s truly accurate when you say freedom works here in South Dakota, when you see small communities like this growing and taking on projects like this,” South Dakota Lieutenant Governor Larry Rhoden said.
The Industrial Park is located north of the corner of Highway 38 and North Oaks Avenue.
