Demopolis Industrial Board celebrates new connecting road that took 25 years to build

It took 25 years, but Demopolis leaders on Thursday finally got to celebrate the opening of a new connecting road in the south industrial park.

In a ribbon cutting ceremony followed by lunch, the Demopolis Industrial Board and other city leaders celebrated getting the nearly $400,000 road completed, which makes the park easier for tenants to navigate and opens up 50-plus more acres for new industries to bring their businesses to Demopolis.

“It’s amazing to finally see this project to completion,” Diane Brooker, past chairman and longtime member of the Demopolis Industrial Board, said at the event. “We have been working on this for so long – it’s very exciting to see it come to completion.”

The project connecting south and north Buddy Griffith Drive had started and stopped several times over the last two decades but scoring a $200,000 grant from the Delta Regional Authority lit the fire needed to put the largest chunk of funding in place to move the project forward, Brooker said. 

But COVID and inflated construction prices caused the cost for the road to double to $400,000.

So Demopolis Industrial Board members went “begging,” Mayor Woody Collins said, asking for municipalities to kick in and help make up the difference. 

In the end, Brooker and new Industrial Board Chairman Kirk Stephens got $50,000 of support from the City of Demopolis, Marengo County and the Marengo County Economic Development Authority as well as their own Industrial Board to make the project happen.

“This road ought to be named Persistence,” Collins said. “Someone dreamed this road up because it was needed nearly 30 years ago.” But, he added, it had many starts and stops along the way.

The industrial board bought culverts 25 years ago, but they sat in wait for 10 years until a land swap with a contractor tenant led to construction of the culverts and a roadbed, Collins said. Then came the grant before COVID, the bad news of the price increase, the push to score funding from government supporters and – finally – its completion this year.

“It just looks like a little short quarter-of-a-mile blacktop road, but to us, it means a whole, whole lot,” Collins said. 

The Demopolis Industrial Park has 14 tenants that are mostly wood and paper industries, as well as Foster Farms that makes 1 million corn dogs a day and a metal recycling plant. They all use trucks in their distribution and were struggling to turn around without using others’ parking lots, Brooker said. The new road gives two entrances and created a loop for the trucks. 

The recycling plant just purchased a $1.5 million machine that breaks up cars into small parts and hired 10 more people, and they will need the road when it is 30 trucks deep, Collins said.

The Industrial Board has plans to add more tenants by offering 5-acre lots for the available 50-75 acres, and Brooker said it will be easier to seal deals with a connecting road in place.