A plan to rezone hundreds of acres and build about 6.5 million square feet of industrial space in Florence and Mansfield is expected to be pulled off the table.
Just months after the project was proposed, major traffic concerns have squashed it. Now, county officials have shifted their focus to alleviating traffic rather than adding to it.
If approved, a change in the state planning map and a subsequent wastewater amendment would have allowed sewage and water to be brought to the site, opening it up to development that could have added some $500 million to the ratable base in the area, according to earlier resolutions of support for the plan.
The idea was to attract developers to add more traditional warehouses or e-commerce fulfillment facilities, like the one Amazon built in Florence, bringing what officials said could be upward of 3,000 jobs to the area.
Now officials are putting the brakes on the proposal due to concerns residents have voiced about heavy traffic that already persists in the area with warehouses like the existing NFI warehouse and Amazon. They are concerned more warehouses will exacerbate the problem.