Entergy Mississippi to provide Warren County’s Ceres site with marketing and promotional assistance

Entergy announced Monday that it has qualified Ceres Industrial Park in Warren County through Entergy’s Economic Development Qualified Site Program along with two other projects in Mississippi.

The Qualified Site Program certifies that professional engineers and other relevant specialists have completed an in-depth analysis of the property. It also ensures that results of the studies are available for review. Projects undertaken on these sites are overseen by a team that provides answers, solves problems, streamlines processes and removes the red tape that can complicate a business’s location or expansion.

Entergy will now provide resources to promote the qualified sites and market them to national and international brokerage firms and site consultants.

The Vicksburg-Warren Partnership has 1,000 available acres in the park, which is 10 miles east of Vicksburg on Interstate 20. There are three qualified parcels in the park totaling 266 acres.

“The program helps businesses go from concept to operations quickly and efficiently, and with accurate cost estimates,” said Ed Gardner, Entergy Mississippi director of business and economic development, in a statement. “It eliminates the unknown and mitigates much of the risk inherent with developing a site.”

Site development is costly for communities, so leveraging local resources with those from agencies like Entergy, the Delta Regional Authority and the Mississippi Development Authority is vital.

“Entergy’s Economic Development Qualified Site Program is an excellent resource for local economic development organizations looking to increase their industrial sites’ marketability in order to attract prospective businesses,” said John Rounsaville, interim director of the Mississippi Development Authority. “MDA commends the teams in Rankin, Warren and Washington counties for taking the initiative to qualify their sites through this program, which will assist them significantly in bringing new jobs and investment to their communities.”

These newly qualified sites join seven others in Entergy Mississippi’s service area. In addition to the Ceres site, they are:

• East Metropolitan Center—Rankin First Economic Development Authority’s site is in its 1,133-acre business and industrial park next to Interstate 20 in Brandon and 3 miles from the metro area’s international airport. Rankin First is qualifying 50 acres and working on documentation for another 170 acres.
• Leland Industrial Park—The Washington County Economic Alliance has 500 qualified acres in this park, which is less than 1 mile north of Leland at the intersection of U.S. Highway 82 and U.S. Highway 61. It is 16 miles from Greenville’s port.

The economic development organizations that promote these sites were all grant winners in Entergy Mississippi’s Excellerator Competitive Communities program last year. The Vicksburg-Warren Partnership won a marketing grant, Rankin First Economic Development Authority received a site readiness grant and the Washington County Economic Alliance received an organizational excellence grant.

“We’re proud to add these sites to our growing list of certified sites, and we commend our economic development partners for the significant investment they put in to meet the requirements of our program,” Gardner said.

Entergy Mississippi’s other qualified sites are in Adams, Bolivar, DeSoto, Hinds, Madison and Tunica counties.