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Photo courtesy of Shelby County.
Foothills Business Park, a development that is selling space to different companies to create a new commercial area alongside U.S. 280, is located on Foothills Place, between Foothills Parkway and Chesser Drive in Chelsea.
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Photo courtesy of Shelby County.
Chelsea Mayor Tony Picklesimer oversees the development of Foothills Business Park, a development that is selling space to different companies to create a new commercial area alongside U.S. 280.
After years of planning and development, the Foothills Business Park in Chelsea has started adding tenants, filling out a project with a long history of city investment.
Foothills Business Park, a development over 13 acres off Old Highway 280 sandwiched between Foothills Parkway to the west and Chesser Park Drive to the east, is a planned development aimed at attracting new businesses and creating a new dynamic for the city, said Chelsea Mayor Tony Picklesimer.
Picklesimer said the idea for the business park came about after the city received an offer to purchase the land for $500,000. To date, the city has invested approximately $1.8 million toward building roads and developing infrastructure in the park.
At the time the city purchased the land, he said, Chelsea was experiencing growth in its housing market.
New residents pushed the city’s population to just over 14,000, as of 2020. Picklesimer said he decided the property would be best used for business purposes rather than another housing development.
“At that time, three or four years ago, housing was just exploding,” Picklesimer said. “We had plenty of housing coming, and I really didn’t see or feel the need to try to promote new housing because it was going on in spite of me, basically.”
Photo courtesy of Shelby County.
Chelsea Mayor Tony Picklesimer oversees the development of Foothills Business Park, a development that is selling space to different companies to create a new commercial area alongside U.S. 280.
He said the idea for the business park was to encourage new companies to locate in Chelsea in an area that was ready-made for businesses, so the businesses could get started as quickly as possible. It was also designed to support the city’s existing businesses and give residents an opportunity to work in the community in which they live.
“My vision for that business park was to create a place where businesses could come and build their buildings and their companies, and give them the opportunity for more people to stay in town for lunch and some more people to live and work in the same community and, if they didn’t live here, to come to Chelsea and work,” Picklesimer said.
My vision for that business park was to create a place where businesses could come and build their buildings and their companies, and give them the opportunity for more people to stay in town for lunch and some more people to live and work in the same community and, if they didn’t live here, to come to Chelsea and work.
Tony Picklesimer
He said the city is not actively targeting specific industries, but he would like to see a mix of technology, medical and some general office buildings relocate to the business park. However, he does not expect the park to be a draw for retail businesses and won’t be a direct source of sales tax revenue for the city. Despite this, he believes the park will have a significant downstream positive impact on the local economy.
“I think it’s going most of the commercial, so it really won’t be a big tax sales tax generator for us, but when people are up there working, they’re going to spend money at our restaurants and our gas stations and, hopefully, they’ll like it being in Chelsea, and perhaps even move here, once they’ve started working here,” Picklesimer said. “I just felt like we needed a development here in Chelsea that would be welcoming for businesses.”
Foothills Business Park is separated into five sites, ranging from 0.91 acres to 3.79 acres, but can be subdivided as needed. Picklesimer said they have sold one of the lots to a development from Pelham with plans to build an office building with an attached warehouse at the rear, as well as an existing building on Chesser Park Drive. Picklesimer said he believes it may take up to five years for the business park to be at full capacity.
The city of Chelsea is working with 58 INC, Shelby County’s economic development corporation, on the Foothills Business Park project. Bradley Paramore, 58 INC’s economic development specialist, said the business park is part of a growing trend as companies look for more business-friendly locales, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns.
“People who are looking nationally to locate businesses, whether they be manufacturers, office space, any of those kinds of things, are looking for sites that are more and more ready to go,” Paramore said. “They’re not just driving down the road, pointing out a bunch of trees and saying, ‘Let’s go there.’”
“They really want a lot more questions answered before they make that decision and a lot of the risk mitigated,” he added. “They want to make sure that all of the utilities are at the site, [that] it’s graded. So when they make a decision and start their due diligence process, they’re not going to come across any surprises.”
Paramore said the park’s visibility from U.S. 280, in addition to its site readiness, make it an ideal location for any business looking to quickly get established in Chelsea.
“Location is everything. That’s not just a saying, it really is,” Paramore said. “It has all of the boxes checked and all the questions answered, and it’s ready to go for whatever business wants to go there.”
