WEST POINT — Work will begin soon to install sewer lines at 138 acres of the Prairie Belt Powersite.

Selectmen, in a special-call meeting Tuesday, approved the low bid of $500,959 from DNA Construction LLC to lay sewer pipe to serve that portion of the industrial site south of Yokohama Boulevard. Two other companies, Perma Corp. and Eubanks Construction Company, submitted higher bids selectmen did not approve.

Stanley Spradling, the city’s contracted engineer who designed the sewer project, said site work should begin by early November and be finished by spring 2021.

The site already has electric, water and natural gas service, meaning the sewer lines are all the infrastructure left to make the tract “shovel ready” for industry, according to Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins, who heads industrial recruitment efforts in the region. In an email to The Dispatch, he said the site is currently a finalist for a “large processor” that is expected to decide where it will locate in the “first or second quarter” of 2021.

“Anytime you have a site that is ready, you are ahead of the game,” Higgins wrote in the email.

The city and county jointly own the Prairie Belt Powersite through the Clay-West Point Economic Development Group. With help from the Golden Triangle Planning and Development District, the group landed a $500,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission to assist in the project. The city and county will split the remaining roughly $125,000 in related costs, Spradling said, which includes engineering fees.

A portion of the Prairie Belt Powersite is home to a Yokohama Tire Company plant, which located there in 2015. Once the 138-acre tract south of Yokohama Road is outfitted with sewer infrastructure, it will leave 332 acres of the site north of the road undeveloped, West Point Mayor Robbie Robinson said.

Robinson added his confidence that an industry will quickly occupy the developed portion and that the rest of the Powersite will one day be developed lies primarily with his confidence in The LINK.

“As long as we have The LINK working with us, we’re always in the ballgame,” Robinson said. “… There are no immediate plans for the (undeveloped acreage). We’re trying to get this project out of the way first. We leave that up to Joe Max Higgins. He brings us the plan, and we buy into it.”

Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.