Ontario Zoning Inspector Dan Herrold provided slide images of the blueprints for the new FedEx facility going into the Beer Road Industrial Park during Wednesday evening’s Ontario Planning Commission meeting. The road being constructed to lead into that area of the industrial park will be called Urwin Parkway after former Mayor Robert Urwin.
Representatives from the Westmoreland Group and the Moltus Building Group were present to answer any additional questions regarding the site and building plans, though this meeting was a final approval of site specifications that the commission has been working on for months. However, it was only yesterday that the name of the business to go into the industrial park was released, naming FedEx as the facility’s occupant.
“It’s not going to be a place that’s open to the public,” explained Kip Cockrell of the Westmoreland Group. “It’s merely a ground distribution center.” Ontario council understands that workers from the Shelby FedEx will be moving to this site, but it will not affect the Mansfield FedEx location.
However, according to a representative at FedEx corporate the company could not confirm employee movement until plans are finalized.
Justin Lipscomb of the Moltus Building Group told the commission that the groundbreaking will be sometime in May, weather permitting.
A portion of the land around the facility is federally purchased wetlands, which requires bio-mediation of the flow into the wetlands.
“Everything that flows into the wetlands now has to continue to flow into it. Because there’s a parking lot and a lot of pavement, the flow has to be slowed down as well as filtered,” explained the city’s Director of Engineering Linda Timmer. The Moltus Building Group has designed a large area for bio-mediation to meet the requirements above and beyond the federal stipulation.
The only thing pending on the entire project is the bond that guarantees the bio-mediation of part of the land. Once the bio-mediation area is implemented, the bond will be released.
At this point, there are three new roads planned for the area. Clerk of Council Cathy Van Auker said, “As they develop the industrial park the road they are putting in is going to be called Urwin Parkway. There will also be two other roads within the industrial park and those are the ones that still need to be named.”
These roads must be named soon so that the plat can be approved by the county.
A granddaughter of the Beer family spoke at a recent public hearing asking that the roads be named after her grandparents, but nothing further has been brought up about the renaming.
