ROANE COUNTY, TN – $356,072 was presented to the Roane Alliance yesterday by Tennessee’s Economic and Community Development (TNECD) Commissioner Randy Boyd. 

The presentation was held in the cul-de-sac of the new access road to the Jones Road site, a state certified site located in the Roane Regional Business and Technology Park.  The Site Development Grant (SDG) will help fund clearing and grading for a building pad on the site to accommodate a minimum 100,000 square foot building.  Funding from the state will be matched by an investment from Roane County Government and Roane County Industrial Development Board.

“In January, work began to create the new access road to the Jones Road site, which we stand on today, and was funded through another grant – TVA’s InvestPrep” said Roane Alliance’s CEO Wade Creswell, during the presentation.  “This grant will allow even more improvements to the site, improving marketability and preparing the site for development in the near future.”

Roane County was selected as one of 15 sites across the state, and one of only two locations in East Tennessee, through a competitive application process through the State’s Site Development Grant program, part of the larger Rural Economic Development Fund announced by Governor Haslam and Boyd last October.   The grant assists communities in finalizing infrastructure and engineering improvements for project-ready certified sites and are intended to help rural communities overcome barriers to site certification and prepare them to receive an economic development project. 

The SDG program works in cooperation with the department’s Select Tennessee Site Certification program, named the best site certification program in the U.S. by Area Development magazine.  Besides Jones Road, Roane County has two additional certified sites - the Horizon Center, Development Area 6 in the Oak Ridge part of the county, and the Cardiff Valley site in the Roane County Industrial Park.

“Site certification is really site elimination.  Rural Tennessee communities already compete for jobs and investment and do quite well. We want to help them up their game and increase their close rate by making our rural county site inventory among the most attractive and project ready in the world,” TNECD Commissioner Randy Boyd said.

“Through this investment, we expect to see more opportunities and deals flow in rural Tennessee by assisting communities in overcoming obstacles for certification or by improving a Certified Site,” Assistant Commissioner for Rural Development Amy New added. “We want to partner with communities to complete the finishing touches on their sites so that we see more gold shovels tossing the ceremonial dirt.”

An advisory committee made up of staff from the department, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture selected these 15 sites from a pool of 24 applications. The application process was competitive with grants awarded based on benefit to the community, economic impact and projected return on investment.

The Roane County Industrial Development Board is a partner of the Roane Alliance, Roane County's comprehensive resource concerning businesses, tourism and economic development.  The Roane Alliance mission is to create an environment and a unified voice that promotes job creation, economic development, enhanced quality of life, education and workforce.  To learn more about the Roane Alliance please contact us at 865.376.2093 andinfo@roanealliance.org or visit www.roanealliance.org.