The Jobs Judge: Bobby Carpenter

Carrie Stambaugh, Managing Editor

Six term Judge-Executive of Greenup County has overseen
era of Infrastructure for Development
 



Decades of work have gone into preparing northeast Kentucky for the chance to land new business development. No one knows that more than Greenup County Judge-Executive Bobby Carpenter. For the last 24 years, he has worked with an array of partners on projects aimed at bringing jobs to the region.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” said Carpenter, are, and have always been, his Number 1 area focus as an elected official.

From the beginning, Carpenter believed jobs would follow infrastructure. In 1994, he ran on getting a road built – a connector between I-64 and U.S. 23. “I told people you could get into Greenup County, but you couldn’t get out,” he recalled. “I took it to everybody that would sit down and listen to me.”

They listened and shortly after his election, the Industrial Parkway (Ky. 67) was built with the full support of then Governor Paul Patton, a native eastern Kentuckian. Carpenter has often told the tale of standing with Patton in a farm field, looking at unrolled maps on a car hood, as the two men talked and dreamed about the prospects a new roadway could bring to rural Appalachia. 

Next came the need for a place to put those potential businesses.

A collaboration between the counties in the FIVCO Area Development District (Boyd, Carter, Elliott, Greenup and Lawrence), state government, Ashland Alliance and American Electric Power led to the creation of the Northeast Kentucky Regional Industrial Park Authority and its 1,000-acre multi-use business park known as EastPark. EastPark sits a handful of miles from I-64 along the Industrial Parkway at the convergence of Carter, Boyd and Greenup counties.

Another collaborative effort years later created the Port of Wurtland along the Ohio River. An international port, it is a launching point for shipping Kentucky goods around the world. CSX also has a hub there. The Boyd-Greenup Riverport also started out “in a cornfield,” remembered Carpenter. The counties used whatever tools they had to begin building it. Greenup County had a bulldozer and a good operator, the late Ralph Dickison, who did the initial site work, recalled Carpenter with a laugh.

Together EastPark and the Port of Wurtland create “book ends,” said Carpenter. The land between the two, connected by the Industrial Parkway, is ready for development. It is here that the best economic prospects for the future lay, says Carpenter, noting again, “That roadway was key.”

Work to improve both business parks and the roadway is constant and is driven by the partnerships, according to Carpenter. In fact, he believes those relationship have led to the destruction of the so-called “Winchester Wall,” a fictional, invisible barrier many felt blocked development and investment from reaching eastern Kentucky.  “We tore that down and threw it away. I don’t even hear it mentioned anymore,” he insists.

In 2017 EastPark became the state’s 14th certified Build-Ready site. The designation means the site has an expandable construction pad; is properly zoned; has electric, water and sewer service; is served by improved roadways; has had environmental and permit issues resolved; and is controlled by the local economic developer.

“That was the smartest thing we’ve ever done,” said Carpenter. It was because of this designation that the site was ready when Braidy Industries’ first pick for a home in South Shore fell through. Braidy Industries CEO Craig Bouchard looked him the eye at that time, said Carpenter, and promised him the plant would stay in the region. Luckily, “EastPark was all ready for them,” he said.

With that initial setback overcome, Carpenter is very optimistic about Braidy’s future in eastern Kentucky. “We have one of the smartest groups in the world in the driver’s seat,” he said. Carpenter had planned to retire at the end of 2018 but was convinced last year to run for his seventh term at the urging of Bouchard, who asked for his help in “seeing the project through.”

“I’m willing to go the extra mile to do anything they need. They have a good group assembled,” said Carpenter.  It’s a move his constituents support, too. For the first time in his political career, Carpenter is running unopposed in the November election.

It all combines to make him very optimistic for the future of the county and excited to continue the work he thought he was ready to step away from.

“I can’t wait to get here in the morning,” he said. He added, economic development “is a lifetime project. It will go on after me. I feel like I had a little hand in it.” He points back to the Industrial Parkway between EastPark and Wurtland, “It will take years to work toward filling it in,” he said. “Braidy is going to be the first rung on the ladder for everything else.”

The region’s aerospace certification, he believes, “will kick in” next, and many more businesses will want to be in the stretch between Portsmouth and Pikeville, including Greenup County. Then, there is the expansion of infrastructure that is still needed. A $19 million project to create new clover-leaf exit and entrance ramps connecting the Industrial Parkway and Technology Drive, along with expanding part of the roadway to four lanes, is in the state’s road plan. There are also plans to expand municipal sewer service from Wurtland up the Industrial Parkway toward EastPark to open additional property along the roadway to development.

It is a lot of work but it's work that many in the region are delighted to continue toiling at. Braidy, Carpenter said, has given him, and many in the region, a “sense of hope and a little sparkle in their eye.”

 


Industrial Parkway Expansion

The 2018 Biennial Kentucky Highway Construction Plan includes plans to upgrade the Industrial Parkway to accommodate additional traffic expected by Braidy Industries new aluminum mill and the expected additional development.

The enacted highway plan has $19 million allocated for improvements to KY 67, with design beginning in the 2018 fiscal year that starts in July and construction starting in the 2020 fiscal year.

Improvements include building an additional two lanes on KY 67 from the I-64 interchange to just past Technology Drive, with a additional overpasses where needed, intersection improvements, and an on- and off-ramp interchange at Technology Drive. The result: A four-lane KY 67 from I-64 to Technology Drive. Altogether just over three miles of improvements.

The alignment for the additional two lanes of highway as well as the interchange is already in place as earth work for future four-lane capacity occurred when KY 67 was first constructed in the 1990s. The resulting roadway will be four lanes with shoulders and center median, and will double the traffic handling capacity of KY 67 between I-64 and EastPark.