By Darryl Wilkinson
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Home construction at Lake Viking is booming. Building projects in Gallatin’s business park spark optimism. Fiber internet access soon to be available throughout Gallatin is another positive sign — all making business prospects brighter for 2021 here. Developments in Gallatin’s business park are most visible, although the journey has been slow.
The idea of a business park for Gallatin took shape due to unusual circumstances. During the 1990s investors in large hog confinement operations looked to build new farms in North Missouri. Against some opposition, Continental Grain Company weathered legal challenges and selected farm sites in Daviess, Gentry and Sullivan counties.
The Gallatin Area Business Park was built with the location of Continental’s corporate offices in Missouri in mind. Farmers Electric Cooperative played a key role in making the park reality, hoping to attract major electricity users that they could serve. State funding and Highway 6 access was secured primarily through the leadership of the late Phil Tate serving in the Missouri House of Representatives at that time. Gallatin’s future appeared brighter when Continental Grain built a brick office building, the first anything erected in the park, near the park’s entrance.
Plans change. Continental Grain sold to Premium Standard Farms which operated from offices near an even larger investment in a meat packing plant at Princeton (hog farms are now owned by Smithfield). The office facility in Gallatin went vacant even as all lots throughout the business park were purchased. Big plans involving some lot purchases proved hollow. For instance, a public announcement to construct a large facility for Wideband never happened. The only construction in the park involved a building to house a plant nursery and landscape business and later storage rental units – both welcomed developments but not exactly providing new jobs as originally intended.
The brief operation of Gallatin Hardwood in the business park beginning in 2014 was noteworthy not only for the dozen jobs created but for the purchase and use of perhaps the poorest building lot in the park. Creeks cutting through their lot with gravel road entry, however, fit the purposes of the log sawing mill. Overall, however, the economy of the times dictated otherwise.
Our business park was located on the north side of town not because of the highway but due to the old railroad bed. When Gallatin needed a new sewer line to serve its west end, the unlikely path selected was the old railroad bed which proved to be an asset for gravity flow advantage. A business park wasn’t envisioned. But with the cooperative bringing electricity, other utility services were within reach with Highway 6 frontage. The table for growth was set.
Slow growth requires patience. For many years neighboring farmers lamented the waste of good hay ground sitting idle. The bypass lane on Highway 6 at the park’s entrance seemed an unnecessary waste of money by cynics. In recent years most traffic into the business park only involved Access II employees and patrons to and from the park’s first facility. That will change with the completion of the Access II Community Building and the truck traffic to the McBee Farm operation and from huge crowds attending B&S Equipment auctions.
Good news sometimes develops so slowly it can be easily overlooked. But to the optimistic who are patient, good news can be celebrated — not only for 2021 but for the opportunities that exist for each new year to come.