What is arguably the largest economic development project in the history of St. Joseph County appears ready to move forward.

The construction of a $700 million electric power plant near New Carlisle is on track to start in the fall of 2012.

“Expect it will be in the fall because they have to go through permitting and reviews and so forth that are all underway,” said Patrick McMahon, Executive Director of Project Future.

Plans for the natural gas fired electric generating plant were first announced in March of 2011 by Development Partners of White Plains New York.

At this point, keeping the project on schedule will require some help from St. Joseph County government.

“I would expect that the improvements may be in the neighborhood of $25 million, that's a guess,” said McMahon.

McMahon said that the request for county funded site improvements basically centers on extending sewer and water service to the power plant site.

Today, the St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted to hire engineers and financial consultants to further study the matter.

“You know there won’t be maybe 30 jobs once it’s up and running,” said St. Joseph County Commissioner Dave Thomas, “but for the two years of construction we’re going to have 500 local union workers building this facility. The developers have signed a project labor agreement with local laborers to use all local union laborers, so that’s good for electricians, plumbers, concrete workers, laborers.”

The new plant will be virtually identical to the one Allegheny Energy began building in 2001.

The Allegheny project was halted sometime in 2002, after the collapse of Enron and the U.S. energy market.

It’s expected that the county’s share of site improvements will be covered by selling bonds that would be repaid using increased property tax revenues generated by the new power plant in the New Carlisle area TIF district.