Feb. 23—Hundreds of new jobs are on the horizon for Pinecrest Business and Technology Park in Beckley.
Some of the jobs will result from two businesses in the health care industry looking to locate and build their own offices on the property.
Others will be spurred from a new veterans nursing home planned for the site.
Jina Belcher, executive director of the New River Gorge Regional Development Authority, said the pieces are slowly falling into place for the development of Pinecrest Business and Technology Park, especially since the city of Beckley became the landowner.
With the property now in the hands of the city, Belcher said it qualifies for state and federal funds that can go toward infrastructure development on the property.
“The problem has always been that the infrastructure wasn’t there,” she said. “Nobody is going to buy a pad of property and then have to build roads to get to it.”
The Pinecrest Business and Technology Park transfer consists of 146 acres of land situated on the East Beckley Bypass.
It was owned by the West Virginia Development Office until 2005, when it was deeded to the Pinecrest Development Corporation.
In January 2022, the development corporation transferred ownership to the city of Beckley.
Since then, Belcher said work has focused on developing and marketing the property while holding to the stipulations of the deed, which dictates that it has to be used for “job-creating entities.”
She added that the property is ideal for back-office facilities as well as business, health care and technology facilities.
Belcher said their current focus is on the acreage facing the East Beckley Bypass.
“We jokingly call this the oceanfront property because it’s the most sought-after property,” she said. “It has bypass frontage, and so anyone that’s going to be driving by the bypass is going to see the company that locates there.”
Now that the city can step in to apply for grants to fund infrastructure needs, Belcher said there have two prospective businesses, both in the health care field, looking to purchase Pincecrest’s oceanfront parcels.
Belcher said the potential deal came about in a roundabout way.
“The NRGRDA recognized that we did not have any marketable office space in Beckley,” she said. “We’ve got folks calling all the time that need like 2,000 square feet, or 1,000 square feet of just like class A office space, and there’s really not any out there to lease.”
Since it didn’t exist and the interest was already there, Belcher said she didn’t see why they couldn’t build it themselves and then lease it out.
While working with an engineering firm to design office buildings, Belcher said she was contacted by a Realtor with a client willing to purchase a piece of the bypass-facing property and pay to construct its own building if the city would pay to get roads and utilities to the property.
Soon after, Belcher said she was contacted by a second business also interested in purchasing and building on the property with the same caveat that the city would take care of the infrastructure needs.
Becher said city officials have been receptive to these deals because it takes them out of the business of having to build and manage a property.
Sam Rich, with The Thrasher Group — the engineering firm working on projects at Pinecrest — spoke with the Beckley Common Council on Tuesday about the plans for the two prospective businesses to locate to what he called the “business office park” in Pinecrest.
Rich said the business office park development would be about 30 acres, and, as of now, the prospective businesses are looking to purchase about four acres of that property.
Even though they’ve only secured potential buyers for only a portion of the space, he said the plan would be to get the infrastructure settled for the entire plot so the city would be prepared for future buyers and businesses.
“The city may still do a bond to pay for the roads and infrastructure as well as the grading but then put the development of those office buildings on the private developer,” Rich said. “It would keep the city in turn out of the leasing (and) real estate business, but still get the benefit of new office buildings and generally may just be a better arrangement altogether.
“So we’re working with understanding what that property owner really wants to purchase and will be probably coming back to you all sometime early this year with next steps on that particular project and trying to do the bond.”
Belcher said the development of this area of the Pinecrest Business and Technology Park will be crucial to the future development of the entire property.
“It’s crucial because this opens up so much more acreage on the front side of the bypass for us,” she said. “… It’s kind of always been our goal to locate manufacturing facilities at the airport and then locate their back-office administration here.
“We’re not going to pigeonhole Pinecrest to that, but I’d really like to see us able to recruit a company that comes and fills the site at the airport and here as well. That’s really the goal.”
In the midst of working on the business office park in Pinecrest, Belcher said Thrasher is also working on designing a 120-bed veteran nursing home at a different location on the property.
She said the plan was to build the veterans nursing home on property the state retained from the days when it owned the entirety of the Pinecrest property.
Belcher said the Department of Veterans Affairs owns several acres in Pinecrest near the Beckley Little League complex.
The nursing home is being funded by state and federal dollars and is expected to create roughly 200 jobs.
However, to meet all the Department of Veterans Affairs’ desires for the veterans nursing home, Belcher said they’ll likely have to relocate the nursing home to a different location within the Pinecrest property.
Belcher said the engineers have proposed building the nursing home behind the Dr Pepper/Snapple facility.
For this to happen, the Beckley Common Council would need to agree to a property transfer.
Overall, Belcher said there are still a lot of moving parts with all the projects, but the future of the Pinecrest Business and Technology Park is looking up.
“It’s huge that this is happening,” she said. “It’s exciting.”
Email: jmoore@register-herald.com
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