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Sidney has a new industrial park in the works as City Council reached an engineering agreement with Baker and Associates at its meeting on Monday night.

The project will consist of preliminary and final platting for the Sidney Industrial Park, including 86 acres of land east of highway L17J and south of Highway 30.

“We bought that tract of land years ago because of an industrial project we were working on,” said Sidney’s City Manager Gary Person. “We really liked that location. Because of all the construction and activity that was occurring this summer, we knew that it was going to be very, very tough to get a bid and to move forward on a project. So we took a wait-and-see approach. The timing seems really good to move forward and to hire an engineering firm, and eventually we’ll bid it out.”

The city now has enough funding to build up its LB 840 Economic Development Fund that the Economic Development Advisory committee felt it would be a good place to invest it.

Last spring, the committee approved the idea of moving forward to put infrastructure into site on the first development phase. The sale of the lots on the first phase, would then help the remaining phases. Leaving the additional property on the tract undeveloped allows for maximum flexibility on remaining projects, Person said. The engineering agreement will cost $78,650.

“It’s time that we move forward,” Person said. “The plan is that we have this land appraised as we sell each parcel. We would then use the proceeds from that to then help fund the second phase. The reason we don’t want to put all phases up front is that it gives us maximum flexibility on how the infrastructure should serve.”

In other action at Monday’s meeting, the home occupation ordinance was passed that allows major and minor home occupations to be allowed in all zoning districts. Back in November, Council rewrote the home occupation ordinance to include more up to date occupations including, eBay, home sales and party planning.

There were also three ordinances passed that would allow for street improvement of the Ranch Subdivisions of Prairie Grass, Cattail and Creekside drives. The street improvements will consist of paving, sidewalks and storm drains and other improvements.