On the Ohio River in Wood County, officials are clearing hurdles to prepare sites for new businesses.
Two locations, 70 acres of farmland and a sprawling industrial park, are set to become suitable for development, thanks to the first $150,000 grant from a new state program designed to make “shovel-ready” sites attractive for businesses.
But these projects are the exception.
Across the state, properties lack the infrastructure needed to attract new employers. Old industrial sites sometimes need extensive
cleanup, while others lack sewer, water or broadband.
Neighboring states from Ohio to North Carolina already maintain catalogs of dozens of ready-to-build properties. Both Kentucky and Virginia list more than 30 certified industrial sites. But West Virginia has none, and a three-year-old program to change that has barely gotten underway.
Currently, nearly 600 buildings and empty properties are listed on the state’s economic development website. But none fit the bill for what the state considers investment-ready.
“We’re hoping that with this funding, we will get the first two stamps of approval,” said Lindsey Piersol, director of the Wood County Economic Development office.
Without this program, West Virginia economic development leaders say companies could turn to neighboring states with shovel-ready properties, taking their investments with them.
“We’re basically doing a company’s due diligence and their homework for them,” Piersol said. “It’s the most important aspect of economic development.”
In 2018, West Virginia lost a $1.6 billion Toyota and Mazda car manufacturing facility to Alabama in part because the state did not have an inventory of shovel-ready properties.
Woody Thrasher, former state secretary of commerce, said the deal also fell through because officials needed to perform environmental studies at two proposed sites that would have taken at least nine months to complete.
“We scrambled like crazy to find a singular site, but Alabama offered them nine different ones,” he said. “It just shone a light on the fact that we really weren’t ready to move quickly,” he said.
Alabama has poured $30 million into its site evaluation grant program since its creation last year and currently has 29 certified sites available for businesses.
Dave Lieving, president of the Huntington Area Development Council, said states without a catalog of development-ready sites can miss out on jobs and investment.
He said companies want a strong labor workforce, a favorable business climate and enough flat land to grow.
“Companies don’t want to wait around years and years for you to clean up your property before you want to get all your ducks in a row,” Lieving said.
Ruthana Beezley has spent the past four years trying to bring jobs and businesses to the Greenbrier Valley.
As the head of the region’s economic development agency, she says the lack of adequately prepared business sites makes it tough.
“We’re prioritizing the folks that have already invested here,” she said. “It’s easier to grow somebody who’s already here than to attract somebody.”
The Legislature tried to address the problem in 2022, when Del. Clay Riley, R-Harrison, sponsored a bill creating a program to improve the readiness of industrial sites. Riley works for Thrasher Group, the largest consulting and engineering firm in the state.
The state’s Economic Development Department administers the program and includes a grant program to provide developers up to $75,000 per site to make them ready for new businesses.
Other states have invested in these programs, pouring millions of dollars into site readiness. In 2024, Virginia lawmakers poured $126 million in development grants for sites, while $35 million was handed out in Kentucky.
Riley said lawmakers put $5 million into the fund in 2022, but Morrisey’s announcement in Wood County in 2025 marked the first allocation.
In the years that followed the initial allocation, the state hired consultants to evaluate more than 100 potential sites for development. That list was eventually narrowed to just 10 viable locations.
“It’s been something that the economic development world has talked about for a number of years,” he said. “I think it was definitely a step in the right direction.”
Steve Roberts, long-time president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, said business leaders have been warning the state for decades that it is falling behind.
“States that surround us are far ahead in having reasonable, well thought through and well funded efforts to keep and attract jobs,” he said, “This is simply a matter of priorities.”
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This story was originally published by Mountain State Spotlight and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
