A half-mile from I-69, six miles from I-24 and seven miles from the Eddyville Riverport in Lyon County lies the Pennyrile WestPark megasite.
It’s owned by the state and expandable in multiple directions, and its untapped potential for industrial development and job creation remain tantalizing for west Kentucky officials. And one major question remains:
Does the property reside in the FEMA flood plain?
During Monday night’s Trigg County Fiscal Court meeting, and following a presentation from Lake Barkley Partnership Executive Director Amanda Davenport, magistrates unanimously approved to answer such a question by joining in on the cost-sharing grant for an engineering study on the property — to be completed and analyzed later this year.
Davenport said the five counties of Trigg, Lyon, Livingston, Caldwell and Crittenden had recently been approved for the 50/50 Kentucky Product Development Initiative (KPDI) match, with the study costing $70,000. Since the site is in Lyon County, Davenport added this municipality will shoulder 40% of the bill, with the remaining 60% split among the other four counties.
It comes out to $10,500 from Trigg’s coffers, with $5,250 to be reimbursed. And, hopefully, the questions get answered.
Davenport delivered a detailed doctrine of this development, which in 2004 began as a coalition of five presiding judge-executives and the executive director for the Pennyrile Area Development District.
In those meetings nearly 20 years ago, she said full due diligence was conducted, including environmental studies, drawn topographic maps, a website and more to promote and enhance the WestPark profile.
Between 2010 and 2015, Davenport noted that officials from FEMA rolled into west Kentucky and mapped out a number of locations — including this established site — and rendered them inside the Ohio Valley floodplain.
This, she said, went against some local and conventional history and wisdom of the time.
The project was shut down for more than a decade, only to be reinvigorated behind a 2022 meeting in which Governor Andy Beshear and the Cabinet for Economic Development called regional economic developers and the Area Development Districts to Frankfort.
It’s here, Davenport said, she and other leaders were able to make the pitch.
Then, last summer, judge-executives along with Davenport convened and agreed to apply for this KPDI grant — and now everyone is close to being up to speed.
Judge-Executive Stan Humphries called the decision “prudent” for the county’s economic future.
For more information on this, and several other, west Kentucky sites, visit thinkrural.com.
