By Tara Brandl
Making Tracy ready for expansion and future development was the message Tracy City Administrator Erik Hansen presented to the Lyon County Board of Commissioners during its regular meeting Tuesday. Hansen talked about the upcoming Center Street project, which the board had approved $1.8 million for at its May 3 meeting, and the hopes of further improvements to Tracy while work is being done on that project.
“There is some limiting factors to growth in the city of Tracy,” Hansen said. “We have lots for industrial development, we have zoning for industrial development, but we don’t have developable lots, meaning they don’t have water, sewer and street attachment. If someone wanted to come to town to build something such as a metal shop, we wouldn’t be able to accommodate them very easily. It’s a real limiting factor to that.”
Hansen explained that the city owns plenty of land but it is not accessible. They have worked with the engineers to see what would need to be done to extend 4th St. East to provide access to the lots including water and sewer. Hansen explained this would be a good time to do the industrial park project as there are other projects going on in town and so the contractors would be in town already.
Hansen asked the county to consider using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars toward the development project in Tracy. Currently there may be some dollars the city would have available once the bids for the Center St. project come in, which Hansen said he is hoping will take place in June. The preliminary estimate the city had for extended 4th St. East was based on 2021 construction bid prices and came in at about $85,000. However, construction costs have increased dramatically and the commissioners were looking for a more up to date cost.
See this week’s Headlight Herald for more on this article.