A long-term plan for identifying industrial, business and green-space sites in Douglas County has been finalized.

Copies of the plan prepared over the past few years by the ECO2 Commission were released Tuesday.

The major idea behind the ECO2 (pronounced echo squared) plan is that every time the community invests money to create new industrial parks, it also will invest a corresponding amount to preserve open space in the county.

ECO2 representatives will meet next week with the city and county commissioners to discuss the plan. The two commissions will need to approve the plan before it can be implemented.

“Our job was to develop a procedure of objective selection criteria to evaluate potential sites in the future,” said Trudy Rice, ECO2 chairwoman.

ECO2 didn’t identify specific sites in preparing its plan; that will be left to a future group to be determined.

ECO2 set four factors that a potential industrial-business park must meet:

1. The landowner must have a voluntary interest in participating.

2. A site must have access to an interstate, federal or state highway or railway.

3. A site must be outside a 100-year floodplain and include more than 100 acres.

4. A site must have an average ground slope on usable acres.

If a site meets the above criteria, there are additional, more detailed criteria to examine.

The voluntary participation of a landowner would allow the city or county to avoid using condemnation to acquire the land.

When an industrial site is chosen, another site would be identified for preservation of green space. That location could be at or near the industrial site or in a different area of the county, Rice said.

ECO2 suggested several possible funding sources for purchase and development of land. They include general and industrial revenue bonds, hotel tax, sales tax, real estate tax and tax increment financing.

The plan also calls for the concept of “net equity funding” so that green-space preservation would be related to development of industrial or business parks. The concept provides that for every $20 million invested in an industrial or business park, $5 million will be invested in open space.

“It’s not dollar-for-dollar or acre-for-acre, it’s a net equity,” Rice said.

ECO2 traces its roots to 2000 when the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce initiated an effort to develop long-term planning for industrial and business space with a special committee. The ECO2 Committee evolved in 2003 into the eight-member ECO2 Commission appointed by Lawrence and Douglas County commissioners.

“I’ve lived in Lawrence for a long time and this is one of the very few times when individuals with diverse opinions came to the table, stayed at the table and actually produced something that was respectful of everybody’s opinions and the good of Douglas County,” Rice said.