Economic development officials know where they want the community’s next major business parks to be.

Now they just need to find the money to establish them.

Members of the Lawrence-Douglas County Economic Development Board voted Wednesday to recommend two sites for development as business parks during the next seven years:

¢ 280 acres at the site of the former Farmland Industries Inc. fertilizer plant at the southeastern edge of town.

¢ 300 acres near Lawrence Municipal Airport, north of the Kansas Turnpike just outside of North Lawrence.

The recommendations will be forwarded to Lawrence and Douglas County commissioners as “top priorities” for future development. Board and commission members plan to meet as early as next month to discuss future steps.

Topping the list will be how to finance the work. Officials estimate that simply preparing each site for new businesses – by making upgrades that would include new roads, sewers, water lines and related projects – would cost $13.2 million near the airport and at least $14.1 million at the former fertilizer plant.

And that doesn’t include the prices for buying the land.

“We need to talk about money,” said Charles Jones, chairman of the County Commission, who told fellow committee members that without financing they could be talking about the issue for another three years. “It’s about how do we bring this to reality, and all these realities involve money.”

RoxAnne Miller, another committee member and chairwoman of the community’s ECO2 task force, added: “You don’t get commitment until you know where the money comes from.”

Jones said that the Farmland site should be the focus of the community’s efforts, in part because of timing issues. He hopes to have a bid assembled by the end of the year for Lawrence and Douglas County to buy the Farmland property.

By Jones’ estimation, the site can have its environmental problems cleaned up for the $7 million Farmland has set aside in an escrow account for such work.

Another $2 million to $4 million will be needed to remove all the concrete footings, steel and other equipment at the site, Jones said, and those costs likely would offset much of the likely price the governments would need to pay for the land.

“I honestly don’t think it would be that much,” he said.

But the land is in line to be sold through Farmland’s bankruptcy proceedings, and Jones figures that farmland’s representatives will be looking for a considerably higher payoff – perhaps $30,000 an acre for 467 acres, or $14 million.

“What they’ll want is not what they’re going to get,” Jones said.