TRACE CREEK — “If you build it, they will come.” That mantra from the motion picture “Field of Dreams” seems to be the driving power behind the development of the 22 Mine Road Industrial Park at the Mingo – Logan County line.

Most likely, few Mingo Countians have seen this development, as it is easy to breeze by the sign on Corridor G, reading, “22 Mine Road,” and miss what is just beyond the curve. It is one of several sites the Mingo County Redevelopment Authority (MCRA) owns and is developing as the key to Mingo’s economic future.

“It’s not a sight that we’re used to in Southern West Virginia – all of this flat land suitable for building. But it’s here and it’s our future and, most importantly, it’s our children’s future,” said MCRA Executive Director Mike Whitt.

Whitt led the William-son High Advanced Place-ment Economics students last week on a tour of all MCRA economic development sites. These students were the first group to get the entire picture of the organization’s efforts, Whitt said.

The site, which already boasts three businesses, having well over $100 million in capital assets, is poised to add more businesses, bringing even more jobs to the site and to Mingo County. Additionally, over 650 flat, usable acres of land await development.

Currently, the reclaimed mountaintop removal site is home to three companies, all lured to the site by it’s great amount of usable land and it’s access to U.S. 119. Cottider G. Mohawk Industries, the country’s biggest provider of hardwood flooring materials, according to Whitt, is the largest of the three existing businesses.

Mingo won out in a heavy competition for the Mohawk facility against several other sites. Mohawk was considering other sites across the U.S. while looking to expand its production facilities. They chose Mingo because of the “readiness” of the 22 mine site in that the MCRA had, through the use of state and federal appropriations, provided water and sewage utilities and the land required no major excavation. The decision brought 250 new jobs over the last seven years. Recent corporate closures of other Mohawk production plants have seen the Mingo Plant pick up additional production demand, which will bring future growth and expansion to the plant.

Another business on the site is Weatherford Frac-turing Company. Weather-ford is a specialist in drilling gas wells for private industry and public utilities. Weatherford’s current investment in the 22 Park is over $40 million of capital assets in equipment, with at least 100 jobs. Again, the access to flat, user ready land was the key to Mingo County landing this facility, Whitt said.

The third company now calling 22 Industrial Park home is a company with a long history in Mingo County, Coal-Mac, Inc. The company relocated corporate headquarters to the site three years ago when it’s former headquarters in Williamson, W.Va,, proved no longer adequate. Had such a site not been available to them, Coal–Mac, Inc., may have had to leave Mingo, causing many of it’s employees to have to relocate as well. Because of the local availability of ready-to-build commercial property, the company was able to not only stay, but to meet it’s size capacity needs as well.

Although these businesses occupy large portions of the property, 22 Mine Road Industrial Park still has hundreds of usable flat land acres available for more industrial and commercial expansion.

“This site would not be available to us if not for a tremendous amount of cooperation between the public and private sectors,” Whitt said. “We have been fortunate that private coal companies have been willing to work with us to create these properties for economic use after they are done with them.”

The movement towards working with private mining companies to reclaim the land in such a way to make these large tracts of land available for public use had its beginnings in a conversation nearly 15 years ago between Whitt and a coal company president. Whitt was on one of the company’s mountaintop removal sites and noticed that, during the reclamation process, dirt was being placed in a manner that, while meeting the reclamation requirements, did very little to make a large tract of flat land. Whitt mentioned to the president that if the dirt were placed at another place on the site, it would help create a large usable piece of land.

Whitt said the president replied, “That dump truck does not have a mind ... it goes where I tell it to. I don’t have the time to figure out the designs to make it into those types of sites for various purposes. But if you, or someone else, will take the responsibility to figure out where it needs to go, I’d be willing to have it put it there.”

Whitt then worked with county, state and federal officials as well as the private sector coal companies to get everyone on board with the idea of using the reclamation process to create usable tracts of land. Thirty-six different agencies came together to make it happen, leading to the 22 Mine site and the various other economic development sites — some public, some private, some public-private — that the MCRA is developing.

Those efforts are poised to pay even more dividends for Mingo County than just the three businesses already at the 22 Industrial Park. Two more operations are already signed and sealed to be located at the Park.

First, two new concrete manufacturing companies, Wrightway Ready Mix and Wright Underground Concrete, both under the umbrella of Wright Concrete, are scheduled to open at the 22 Mine Road Industrial Park late in the spring of 2009. These facilities will bring 20 new jobs to the county at first, then expanding to as many as 60 within two years.

Then, an 80-acre tract of land on the site will serve as the new home of the combined Mingo-Logan National Guard unit. Once again, the availability of the ready-to-build land made this project possible, keeping the local guard units of both Mingo and Logan counties at home. The Guard base will serve as home to as many as 150 guardsmen at any given time.

“This is real economic development for our county on a scale that beforehand was unimaginable due to the land availability,” said Whitt. “And the biggest problem we have with this and our other economic development sites is that at least 90 percent of the citizenry don’t believe it’s possible because they can’t see it right now. They very much believe that things can only be what they’ve always been because they haven’t seen these sites. Oh, they’ve heard about the sites and the projects and the possibilities they bring. But many refuse to believe that this is creating a very bright future for our children and grandchildren, only because they cannot see it now. But you look on any one of these sites and you can’t help but see the possibilities.

“Large acres of flat, usable land are certainly not what we’re used to in West Virginia,” Whitt told the students on this tour. “We’ve been told for generations that the impediment to economic diversification here was the lack of land. Well, when you look at these sites, you know that’s not the case anymore.”