“When Bidell was looking for a sight in the Ohio River valley they were looking for a 100,000 square-foot building and approximately 10 acres,” said Pat Ford, executive director of the BDC.

Luckily for the north end of Weirton, they had the building but they were missing the land.

“There are very few sights that have access to the roads, rivers have all the water and sewer lines available to them,” Ford said.

They still needed the 10 acres the company was looking for so the city got creative with its space.

“What’s exciting about this particular grouping of lots is that we had the 110,000 square-foot building, and we had a series of lots unfortunately separated by alleys and roads but with some creative planning with the city of Weirton and Frontier, we were actually able to assemble the full ten acres,” Ford said.

The two alleyways and roadways that are splitting the lots are going to go through that abandonment procedure, and with cooperation from the city this is a big improvement

“That has now paved the way for a full $5 million investment,” Ford said.

This investment is the largest on the north side of Weirton yet. Bidell has around 40 employees right now but there are jobs available for a potential 160 employees headed into the future.

“Since there isn’t going to be any traffic impact, it was a pretty easy decision for all of us to make that this is the right move to create a development and employment opportunity in the city of Weirton,” Ford said.

The land will be used for several tons of machinery storage, construction and operation.

“What you’ll see is a very systematic and methodical approach to actually bringing pieces of equipment in that will all be assembled and fabricated on site to make one large unit that will then go out to essentially a site in the United States,” Ford said.

The request was sent to council for approval. If you have any questions about the plan, you can contact the BDC.