Greene County Development Corporation has had a busy year according to executive board member Sid Jones and executive director Ken Paxton. They updated the county supervisors and made their budget request for FY20 at the supervisors Dec. 17 meeting.
GCDC gets the majority of its funding from Greene County and the city of Jefferson. Grow Greene County also maintains a draw down project fund for GCDC. The development corporation asked the county for $50,000 in the coming fiscal year, which is unchanged from the current year.
Jones assured the supervisors that “it’s not all about Jefferson. We spend a lot of time, and Ken (Paxton) attends council meetings. We try to stay in contact with them. They’re invited to have people on our board,” Jones said.
It the past year GCDC sold three lots it has owned for decades – the new location for Wahl-McAtee Tire Service in the west industrial park, and the lots on which Jefferson Veterinary Clinic and Slininger-Schroeder’s crematorium will open in the east industrial park.
Jones said a lot of work has been done on housing, mostly behind-the-scenes. He said GDCD is very close to having a private housing fund established, with members and funding in place. The group is now working on writing an operating agreement.
He referred to the Pillar Technologies project and said there are other big projects on the horizon, “but we have to have housing in place for that to happen.”
Paxton said that of the eight years he has been with GDCD, the last year has been the most exciting and impactful. “It put us over a threshold to where we are a very special place to live…. I’ve been requested probably five or six times to talk about conferences…. because they don’t understand how Greene County is doing it. They’re shocked at how aggressive we’ve been and the kind of projects we’ve been able to move forward and where we are,” Paxton said. “It’s such a pleasure and an honor for me to be able to represent the county at those meetings.”
Paxton said involvement of young leaders seems to be a problem in 80 to 90 percent of rural counties, but that Main Street and Vision 2020 got young people involved. They took over leadership on promoting the April school bond referendum. “I think that involvement of young leaders has been a critical difference between us and the 80 to 90 percent of rural counties. We’re in a wonderful spot. What’s coming up in the next two or three years is going to be pretty exciting,” he said.
He said there will be more discussion of the Three Block project, which involves the block on which the Greene County Community Center, the middle school, and the school administrative building.
Jones later said the project will require a lot of investors and many groups working together, and called it “a big challenge.” Assisting a developer in getting the middle school housing project off the ground will be a big part of it, he said. According to Paxton, a developer is extremely interested. GCDC will provide help with the “soft costs” of the project.
Paxton said there is someone “aggressively involved” in putting multi-family housing in the current middle school once it’s vacated, and that a developer is close to building four-plexes in Jefferson. “There are some housing projects that are awfully close, and that’s critical,” Paxton said.
Jones said that when the Pillar Technologies guests visited Jefferson there seemed to be a sense of awe in how the different public organizations are going to work together – the county, the city of Jefferson, GCDC, Main Street and the Chamber. “There is a cooperation here that you don’t have everywhere. People wonder how that works,” Jones said. “It takes a lot of communication.”
