Gov. DeSantis announces $2.8 million grant for Citrus County infrastructure, economic development

CRYSTAL RIVER, Fla. – A long-awaited project in Citrus County got a much-needed boost today.

Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a multi-million dollar grant that is the last piece needed to establish a new industrial park.

The hope is to land the big development at US 41 and N. Lecanto Hwy., and it will help create more than 1,000 new jobs.

The land is green, vacant and Citrus County hopes full of opportunity.

“This truly is a pivotal milestone in economic development journey for our county,” said commissioner Rebecca Bays.

The governor dropped off a $2.8 million grant that the county can use to build a sewer underneath the 551-acre parcel.

That’s the last piece needed to consider Holder Industrial Park construction ready, for what they hope will be a big industrial player to build a plant for manufacturing or data storage.

“We’ve had multiple businesses that have already inquired about the parcel, but nobody wants to wait five years to have utilities running to the site,” said Josh Wooten, the Citrus County Chamber of Commerce CEO. “This enables us now to say, hey, this is site ready.”

The state expects the industrial park to create 1,000 jobs outright, and spur the creation of up to 2,000 additional jobs. 

The hope is the jobs will be high-paying, given the proximity to several research universities.

“That would be a huge impact, a huge payroll that would then circulate throughout our community many times over,” said Wooten.

The project is a dozen years in the making, and has seen county commissioners reject it as recently as 2017. 

The county expects it to create $350 million in economic activity, like gold, in a county that has never fully recovered from the 2008 nationwide economic collapse.

“We had massive foreclosures,” said Bays. “We laid off 250 of our staff in the county. We lost 600 of our most talented workforce.”

The governor says the grant has a chance to generate a solid return on investment, which Bays expects to literally be generational.

“We’ll now have places that our kids can either stay at home and work or go get educated and come back to the community and work,” said Bays.

There is no official timeline on awarding the site to a bidder, but commissioners say they’ve already had discussions with several possible suitors.

The hope is to have a deal in place in another six months.

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