Judge Optimistic About STP Expansion

Judge optimistic about STP expansion

Heather Menzies | Posted: Sunday, June 26, 2011 1:04 pm

The spotlight of our first Readers Choice feature falls on Matagorda County Judge Nate McDonald.

When we posted the opportunity for The Bay City Tribune followers on Facebook to pose their questions to McDonald, we received comments from 11 citizens on a variety of topics.

The resounding theme of the majority of the questions was concern over lack of recreational and retail options in the county and the future of South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company.

Amy Tidwell was the one to voice her concern over the future of STP.

McDonald said that the county’s answer to the delay in progress over STP units 3 and 4 has been to take action at the community level.

The Fukushima disaster triggered two obstacles, the pause in licensing progress and the loss of two of the project’s investors—NRG and TEPCO.

“In response to those things, what we’ve done at the local level is to bring our economic development team together (including D.C. Dunham, Bay City Community Development Corporation director; Owen Bludau, Matagorda County Economic Development Corporation director; and Mitch Thames, Bay City Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture president) to brainstorm about how we can leverage our assets in corporate America,” said McDonald.

“We have a rudimentary outline of how to proceed, but we feel like we have funders that will come to the table and we left that meeting with a list of action items to work on.”

“What we’re doing is looking to go at (securing investors) another way and trying to breathe new life into this project,” he added.

McDonald said he’s optimistic that the project will move forward.

“I would be surprised if this doesn’t go on within the next few years,” he said.

Celeste Courville, Kristen Stokely Brannon and Jeffrey Marble all agreed that family recreation opportunities are needed in the county.

They suggested a movie theater, water park or bowling center.

McDonald said that a small market movie theater owner had been ready to invest in a new theater in Bay City.

“He had even gone so far as to pick a vacant building and begin an interior design plan,” said McDonald.

The project didn’t pan out because of costly demands in the entertainment industry.

“They were talking about spending $3 million on a theater here but then got slapped with over $800,000 in upgrades on their current theatre just to continue receiving the films,” he said.

“They made the choice to spend the money with the theater that was already successful for them over building a new one here with us.”

The idea of having an 8-screen, stadium seating movie theater isn’t dead, though, said McDonald. Although the Madison Development project has stalled, along with the progress of STP Units 3 and 4, thanks to Dunham, it is still alive and waiting for good news from STP in order to move forward.

Madison Development’s business plan outlines that a large anchor store will need to be secured and go in on the East end of the plaza and immediately following the large store, a movie theater should go in on the West end.

“We’ll get one,“ he said.

“We just have to keep working at the challenges that come our way.”