Strasburg, Ohio - Village officials are giving a helping hand to a local business planning to build in their newly-formed Joint Economic Development District with Franklin Township.

Members of Strasburg Village Council agreed this week to accept a bid from Rudzik Excavating of Struthers to extend the town’s water and sewer lines to the future site of ProVia’s new distribution facility near the intersection of routes 21 and 250.

Village Administrator Ron Lambert says they will be extending the water lines by 8,300 feet and the sanitary sewer lines by 6,300 feet to reach the construction site. 

“The utility extension came about obviously because of ProVia wanting to locate their new facility at the present site that’s under construction. They had no utilities there and ours were the closest available sources of potable water and sanitary sewer facilities,” he says.

Lambert says the bid was one of eight received and came in at just over $2 million. He says the town will be funding the project through a low-interest loan from the Ohio Water Development Authority (OWDA) and the company will be covering the cost of the payments.

“We’re assisting with some financing opportunities to take advantage of some lower interest rates on ProVia’s behalf to make these extensions more affordable, and ProVia is going to be absorbing the cost of these extensions,” he says.

Lambert says they also have an agreement with the township to split any future income tax revenue from the business.

"Our industrial park that is within the village corporation limits is currently nearly full. There's not a lot of room for additional growth within the corporation, and traditionally any growth outside the corporation would not benefit the village from the perspective of being able to collect withholding tax," he says. "Since we have partnered with the township and formed a Joint Economic Development District, now we can share with the township in the tax revenue that we're now able to collect that we otherwise would not be able to collect." 

Lambert says the still have a few things to finalize before they can officially award the contract for the utility extensions. 

“We will close the loan with OWDA, and we will continue to finalize easements from property owners for construction,” he says. “The contracts have been approved but we can’t award until some of these other items have been taken care of.”

Lambert says they would like to see the work get started as soon as possible, ideally in February or March, although the exact timeline will be weather dependent. Their goal is to have the project completed by early fall.  

STACEY CARMANY, TUSCO TV