Helena Harbor earns national REDI Sites designation for business growth

Helena Harbor has earned a national REDI Sites designation, giving Phillips County another credential to sell to manufacturers and logistics firms looking for ready-made industrial ground. The recognition is meant to help move Helena Harbor from a promising river asset to a site that can actually close deals, but the payoff will be measured in construction work, permanent jobs and new tax revenue.

Helena Harbor and Phillips County economic-development officials announced the designation in a Facebook post, saying the harbor is being positioned for business recruitment, industrial investment and long-term growth. REDI, which stands for Readiness Evaluation for Development and Investment, is the Site Selectors Guild’s national site-readiness program for U.S. office and industrial projects. The Guild says the program uses a searchable database of sites assessed by site-selection consultants, and that qualifying properties must be at least five acres, available for sale or lease and placed into a bronze, silver, gold or platinum tier that lasts one calendar year.

The harbor’s industrial park already has the physical features site selectors look for. Helena Harbor says its industrial park sits off Arkansas State Highway 20, six miles south of Helena, and is owned and managed by the Helena/West Helena/Phillips County Port Authority. The site includes two and one-fourth miles of a nine-foot-deep channel with a turning basin, while the Arkansas Waterways Commission identifies the Helena-West Helena-Phillips County public terminal on the Mississippi River and says the Phillips County Port Authority has developed a 2.3-mile-long site there.

That river access matters because Phillips County is trying to compete on logistics as much as on land. The Phillips County Chamber of Commerce says the county sits on the Mississippi River and is 65 miles from Memphis, a location that gives local promoters a direct line to river commerce, freight movement and broader Mid-South distribution networks. The county’s industrial pitch has also been building for years: Arkansas Business noted that Helena Harbor had already received AT&T fiber-ready and bronze-level Site Selection Guild designations, and Helena Harbor’s website says Envirotech opened there in March 2015 and expanded in 2019.

The new designation also fits Arkansas’ push to enlarge its inventory of shovel-ready industrial sites. The Arkansas Site Development Program is designed to increase that inventory, and the Arkansas Economic Development Commission says the program offers matching funding for site development improvement activities. For Phillips County, the question now is whether Helena Harbor can turn a national label into visible work on the ground, from utility and site upgrades to a tenant announcement that brings payrolls, contractors and a larger industrial tax base into Helena-West Helena.