Hartsville's Four Lakes Industrial Park will apparently be the site of a 2,000 bed medium security Corrections Corporation of America prison, bringing approximately 340 jobs and $100,000,000 in capital investment to the region, it was confirmed early this week.

Four Lakes Authority director Dick Walker said CCA officials had verbally agreed last week to purchase 108 acres in the industrial park for an undisclosed sales price, and CCA has crews already in the process of taking core samples and doing sub-surface soil surveys to determine the “pad readiness” of the proposed prison construction site.

Josh Brown, the private prison corporation's director of customer relations, said a formal contract is still in the process of being drafted.

“Obviously that is something that will have to happen fairly soon,” Brown told reporters. Brown confirmed that CCA is doing on-site work to determine the full cost of site preparations, and that a contract will have to be reviewed by both parties (CCA and the Four Lakes Authority Executive Committee) before the purchase becomes final.

Preparations by local officials to facilitate location of a private prison at the Four Lakes Industrial Park area of Trousdale county were already well underway, with the Trousdale County Commission recently voting unanimously in favor of making $6-million in improvements in the county's water and sewage facility, “contingent upon Corrections Corporation of America locating a prison in Trousdale County.”

The action came at the regular June 22 meeting of the Hartsville/Trousdale County Commission.

The Hartsville/Trousdale Water and Sewer Board asked for permission to borrow the money, and Water Department director Jerry Helm told commissioners that regardless of CCA's decision, an upgrade of the county's water and sewage facility is inevitable within the next few years as the EPA tightens water quality regulations, according to reports in the Hartsville Vidette by editor Liz Ferrell.

At their June meeting the commissioners listened to objections raised by a group opposed to the location of a private prison in Trousdale, but as part of their resolution the commissioners stated “the cost...will not be at the expense of the taxpayers and no increase in water and sewage rates will be incurred if CCA builds in our county.”

The Four Lakes Authority has agreed to make $1.5 million in sewer and water line infrastructure extensions to the prison site, and the utility bills paid by the private prison are projected to pay the debt service on the $6-million in water and sewer system improvements recently approved by the Water and Sewer Board.

In other Four Lakes developments, a 54,000 square foot “spec” building in the industtrial park is 󈭓 percent complete” said Walker this Monday. The super energy efficient modern building has R-26 rated insulation in walls and ceiling, and 30 foot eves to accommodate even a very large commercial warehouse or industrial customer.

“We're also in the process of purchasing 300,000 square feet of additional warehouse space from TVA,” said Walker. Much of the existing warehouse area will be leased back to TVA for storage of materials still on the site of the mothballed Hartsville Nuclear Plant.

The Four Lakes Industrial Park, also called an “industrial incubator,”is located on the Cumberland River in both Trousdale and Smith counties, about 18 miles south of Lafayette near Dixon Springs.