By Sarah Tincher

May 13, 2016 - West Virginia leaders are making strides in progressing the development of the Hobet surface mine site in Boone and Lincoln counties.

The former Patriot Coal site is ultimately expected to offer 12,000 of flat land — a rare commodity in the Mountain State — to industrial and commercial companies looking to expand.

“This piece of property up here has more flat ground than the entire city of Huntington,” said Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who initially announced plans to redevelop the property during his January State of the State address. “It’s a huge piece of property and there’s just great potential for investment here on this site.”

Now that reclamation work on the site is about 90 percent complete, the state is working to get through Phase I of the project, which includes preliminary site development plans for 4,000 acres of land, as well as the release of a Division of Highways request for qualification (RFQ) for the design and construction of an access road.

DOH plans to award a contract for the access road in October, with construction expected to start March 2017.

The access road, which will span 2.6 miles from U.S. Route 119 and W.Va. Route 3 to the existing haul road north of Danville in Boone County, is the most important facet to this phase of development, according to Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette.

“That will be a clear signal to a prospect, who may not be familiar with southern West Virginia, that this project’s real and it’s moving fast and the opportunities are there,” Burdette said.

The state is also working to develop plans to extend water, sewer and fiber infrastructure to the site.

“At the end of the day, the strategy here is to build a world-competitive site,” Burdette said. “A that is fully implemented with commercially acceptable roads, full capacity of natural gas, water, sewer, broadband and cell.”

In addition to offering flat, developable land, state officials also touted the location of the site, given its proximity to Charleston and nearby access to several interstate junctions.

“For companies that don’t know anything about West Virginia but are looking for sites that they’ll come to this site because of its proximity to Charleston,” Burdette said. “But they’ll develop its workforce mostly from the southern counties. We think that’s a perfect situation.”

Altogether, project leaders expect the site to reach an estimated workforce of 400,000 people within a 50- to 60-mile range in Boone, Lincoln, Logan and Kanawha counties.  

Burdette emphasized that this is site is meant to be a long-term investment to creating a more stable economy in southern West Virginia.

“It is essential, not for the next six months but for the next 60 years, that we have a strategy that allows the southern West Virginia economy to be diversified,” Burdette said. “We’re not talking about instant gratification here. … This is clearly a long-term plan.”

The Hobet Project is in a prime location adjacent to U.S. Rt 119, major corridors & 3 major interstates.