CONSTRUCTION BOOSTS SOUTHERN ILLINOIS ECONOMY

MOUND CITY, Ill. -- Pulaski County is home to two major construction projects and shares in a number of economic development projects in the Southern Illinois area.

The $1.2 billion Olmsted Locks and Dams project, the largest ever undertaken by the U.S. Corps of Engineers, will require 10 more years for completion.

The $7.5 million, 200-bed, Tri-County Detention and Justice Center, under construction along Interstate 57 near Ullin, should open for operation within 10 months or less.

Construction in the lower four counties of Southern Illinois during the past year has provided a big economic impact in Alexander, Union, Pulaski and Massac counties.

Some of the construction projects:

-- A new bridge over railroad tracks on U.S. Highway 51 at Cobden in Union County.

-- The Union County Redevelopment Corporation is seeking a new housing development for senior citizens at Anna.

-- Housing permits are up in Union County.

-- A new Wal-Mart Supercenter is under construction at Anna. It will replace the current store and is expected to open this spring.

-- A new 40-apartment, senior citizen's complex opened in 1997 at Ullin.

-- Players International, a riverboat gambling complex at Metropolis in Massac County, recently completed a $9 million facility on the Ohio River.

-- Construction of a regional water-treatment and distribution center that will serve as many as 2,700 families in three Southern Illinois counties this year.

-- A $9.2 million educational expansion at Shawnee Community College near Ullin.

-- The new Tamms Correctional Center, which employs more than 450 people, was formally dedicated earlier this month. The $73 million complex will house 500 of the state's most violent inmates and employ 455 workers.

The latest employment figures revealed that more people are working in Southern Illinois. Even with some reports of temporary manufacturing layoffs, average employment in the four lower counties averages about 8 percent, led by Massac County's 4.3 percent and Alexander's 8.9 percent.

With big construction projects nearing an end and others just beginning, businesses are booming.

Dam construction has a provided an economic impact in all areas of Southern Illinois, Western Kentucky and Southeast Missouri. Olmsted, population 350, and several other immediate Southern Illinois communities are sharing in an economic boom during the construction.

Area suppliers are benefiting from the dam construction, and local services are providing such items as welding, repairs, fuel, lumber, rope and rigging, office supplies.

The second big project, construction on the Tri-County Detention and Justice Center, is expected to be complete by year's end. It started in the summer of 1997.

The prison, being built by Western Corrections Inc., a private prison company headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M., will house inmates from Union, Pulaski and Alexander Counties. It will employ about 50 to 55 people.

The Olmsted lock and dam will employ about the same number of people when it is completed. Now the project is in the fifth of 10 stages, which is the largest, longest and most labor-intensive of the projects. The $230 million project cost is shared by the Corps and the Inland Waterways Fund.

"We reached a significant milestone on the project recently," said Robert Giles, site project engineer. "We hit the $100 million mark in costs at the project."

Work on the new dam and locks started in 1993, with the coffer dam contract in 1994, and the current contract in 1996.