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BELLEVILLE — Supporters of the Belle Valley Industrial Park here say they hope the construction of a $2.25 million office-warehouse building is a sign of an improving economy.

"The whole economic scenario has been pretty tough," said Steve Knebel, project superintendent for the construction of the 26,650-square-foot building for Power Maintenance and Constructors LLC at 201 Tower Plaza in the industrial park on the southeast side of Belleville.

Knebel said it’s one of a handful of major projects his construction management firm, IMPACT Strategies Inc. of Fairview Heights, has been involved in during the last several months. The industrial park project will be one of only a few buildings erected in Belleville in the last two years.

The office-warehouse building is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Construction began in late June.

The building will replace Power Maintenance’s existing location on North 17th Street in Belleville. City officials said the company has outgrown its current quarters. The new building is designed to be expanded to the north if more room is needed later, Knebel said.

"This is a neat little project," he noted, adding that it uses an innovative "tilt-up" design, whereby the concrete walls are poured flat on the ground and then lifted into place with a crane after the concrete dries.

"We stand all of the walls up in about three days," Knebel said. Weather permitting, the project might even be completed a few weeks before the end of the year, he added.

IMPACT Strategies worked with the architectural firm Gray Design Group Inc. of St. Louis on this project.

Power Maintenance and Constructors is a privately held company established in 1996 that specializes in power plant maintenance work paydayloans.

For more than a decade, Power Maintenance has been the maintenance contractor for the Midwest operations of Dynegy Inc.

Dynegy provides wholesale power, capacity and ancillary services to utilities, cooperatives, municipalities and other energy companies in 12 states. It operates a variety of power plants fueled by a mix of coal, fuel oil and natural gas.

Belleville Mayor Mark Eckert said he hopes this project will signal the start of a new wave of building in the industrial park, which was opened for development more than 30 years ago.

The park "has a great history, and we are planning for future growth there," Eckert said. "It has helped us keep some businesses that were running out of room at their old locations and otherwise might have left Belleville."

That’s the case with Power Maintenance, the mayor noted.

Eric Schauster, grants coordinator for the city of Belleville, said the construction project is part of the third phase of the development of the 90-acre Belle Valley Industrial Park. The first few businesses and industries set up shop there in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Steady growth continued at the industrial park until the economic slump of this decade. Local tax abatements and tax-increment financing helped fuel the growth, but new construction loans generally have dried up in the last two or three years, officials said.

The industrial park now has about 30 businesses and industries, Schauster said. The largest is Belleville Shoe Manufacturing Co., a major military contractor that manufactures combat boots, he said.

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