This is the third year in a row that Mark Turner has had the same top goal for the Economic Progress Alliance of Crawford County — getting the first tenant to locate somewhere on the sprawling 1,300-acre Keystone Regional Industrial Park site in Greenwood Township.

Despite failing to attract a tenant to the Keystone park, the Alliance, which Turner serves as executive director, has had significant successes at other sites it owns. It’s landed new tenants for Crawford Business Park and Crawford Woodlands, both in Vernon Township. The Alliance also helped process more than $14 million in loans for 13 firms in 2007.

However, having the first tenant locate at Keystone is the major goal for the Alliance in 2008, said Turner.

When will Keystone be ready?

The big holdup in landing a tenant has been Keystone’s lack of infrastructure — namely water and sewer lines and roads, said Turner.

When the Keystone was first being set up in 2000, Sue Ferry, a past executive director of Meadville Area Industrial Commission (one of the Alliance’s predecessor agencies), often called it “shovel ready,” meaning all was ready for a prospective tenant to begin a building project.

There is a water tower, some water lines and an access road off Adamsville Road leading into a 223-acre area where HON Industries, a Muscatine, Iowa-based office furniture manufacturer, bought 80 acres in January 2001. However, it is a water well system only for that 223-acre area. Though it still owns that land, HON hasn’t built yet.

“We were not shovel ready,” said Bill Bragg, president of the Alliance’s board of directors. “We’re only getting a water system (for a majority of the park) now.”

Progress has been made toward installing the first phase of a water system for the park, but it has been slow because of wetlands issues.

Construction of a public water system for the industrial park is expected to begin this summer. However, before construction can start, delineation of wetlands on the site is needed since it’s near the Conneaut Marsh. In addition, development of a master plan has to be completed.

Since 2006, the Alliance has been working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to determine what areas are truly wetlands. The delineation project is expected to wrap up in June. However, Alliance officials already know that about half of the park will be ruled wetlands. It’s a major blow because those 650 to 700 acres can’t be developed.

“Wetlands are a fact of life in Crawford County,” Turner said. “I’m disappointed, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make a productive investment for the community.”

“It was a fundamental question we couldn’t answer,” Turner said of what areas can be developed. “It made it very difficult. We’re just now in position where someone needs a 40-acre site we have a 40-acre site, or a 20-acre site and we have a 20-acre site.”