NATCHEZ — Changing demands and a developing energy market to the south means Adams County economic development officials will need to re-evaluate what to do with its industrial land offerings. Two years ago, the two largest serviceable tracts of industrial land in the county were locked down, the former International Paper facility owned by Rentech and the Belwood Country Club site dedicated to the promise of an alternative fuels plant owned and operated by KiOR. But Rentech scrapped its proposed 400-job coal-to-liquid fuel plant plans in 2012, and this week, KiOR missed a payment to Adams County that would have held the Belwood land for its proposed development that at one time promised the creation of 320 direct and indirect jobs. Rentech sold the 478-acre IP property to Adams County in August 2013. The Adams County Board of Supervisors has instructed its attorney to draft a letter asking KiOR its intentions with regard to the six-month, $150,000 option on the Belwood property. KiOR has said it will likely run out of money within a month and may need to seek bankruptcy protection, and Natchez Inc. Executive Director Chandler Russ said this week he considers the 120-acre Belwood property to be “effectively back on the market.” But even as the large acreage is available, Russ said developments in the region may change how that acreage is presented to potential clients. “What has changed significantly since we purchased Rentech and since we got the property back from KiOR was the Tuscaloosa Marine Shale (TMS) development and the escalation of the energy petrochemical industry throughout the region,” he said. “We have begun marketing the IP site to energy and petrochemical operations and are having some success in that area, and the TMS supplier side of things is really picking up tremendously. We are literally at a point where we have got to determine the land needs of most of the TMS type operations, which are 5-acres here and 10-acres there type needs.” Currently, Natchez Inc. is trying to balance between marketing small parcels of property and large tracts, Russ said. “With the small parcels we are moving, we are still keeping the large tracts in place, but there will come a time when we have got to really look at further subdividing the property,” he said. Belwood and IP KiOR never turned dirt on any actual construction on the Belwood site, but the company cleared the land and left it prepared for development. While the loss of potential industry wasn’t desired, the experience hasn’t been a loss, Russ said. “The property has been cleared and grubbed, meaning it is free of tree cover and there are no stumps and debris,” he said. “We also were able to relocate a sewer effluent line, which was something that was important, and we were able to determine the (environmental) permit requirements for the property to move forward.” The county had committed to building a levee to protect the flood-prone property but had waited for KiOR to give the nod it was going to start construction. Since building never happened, the levee was never built. But thanks to the pre-development work at the Belwood site, what is needed to build that levee one day has been established. “We know where that levee needs to be and what permits are required and not required,” Russ said. “We have it in a turnkey levee situation and somebody could go out there and we could say, ‘Here is where the levee goes,’ and someone could start construction very quickly verses having to go through many steps.” Of the acreage on the IP site, approximately 27 are committed to lease or option, with another 20-25 acres committed to infrastructure, primarily the industrial wastewater treatment facility, Russ said.