New Florence officials talk truck route with data center developer

New Florence officials met with representatives from NorthPoint Development, LLC in early April to discuss reconstruction of the existing truck route tied to the proposed Amazon data center project in Montgomery County.

Mayor Beth Nelson shared the conservation she had with NorthPoint Vice President of Development Jennifer George during a Board of Aldermen meeting on April 13. She said the developers want to avoid coming into New Florence as much as possible.

“She already knows that our streets are pretty torn up and, with the extra wear and tear that comes from their property, they know that they want to help back the community and fix what else is torn up,” Nelson said. “We showed her a picture of the truck route the way it is versus the proposed way that we talked about with planning and zoning a little bit about coming in. She seemed to be on board with that.”

NorthPoint wants to redo the existing truck route which includes Milton, Fourth and Hudson streets. After a discussion that lasted over 20 minutes, board members voted for the developers to get approval from the Planning and Zoning Board.

“If you’re going to approve the location of an existing truck route, you can do that because it’s already existing,” City Administrator David Ingle said. “Throw the question to the Planning and Zoning of the proposed and existing truck routes.”

Alderman Jason Carter went with Nelson to the meeting with the developers. He said redoing the truck route is not possible.

“The timeline is not there,” Carter said. “So they don’t have time to do this. They want us to decide a true truck route. Where do they want to go? Because when they decide where they want to go, that’s the route they’re going to take. So they know they’re going to tear it up. They’re willing to fix it after the fact.”

Nelson said according to George, there will be some instances that the developers will not be able to use the truck route because of train crossings or weather issues.

“They might have to cut into town, but they wanted to limit that as much as possible,” Nelson said. “However, she wanted to know what route we wanted to use if that should occur and what route we want the employees to use because that will also increase vehicles on our roadways and whatnot. She can’t guarantee that the employees will use it because they’re using GPS. She doesn’t want to add any increased traffic areas to disturb the residents.”

NorthPoint is a real estate development firm that is partnering with Amazon Web Services to develop the first phase of Project Green, to be located east of New Florence.

“They really want to become part of our community,” Nelson said. “They want to be invited to stuff. They want to adapt to us, not us to them. With that being said, if there’s anything that disturbed our way or would be detrimental, what could they do to help that?”