An old saying goes that, "Good things happen in three."

Superstitious or not, city officials and members of the Ironton Port Authority are keeping their fingers crossed that this is true when it comes to three potential tenants in the South Ironton Industrial Park.

An independent group of volunteers focused on economic development projects, port authority chairman Bill Dickens and vice chairman Rob Slagel told the city council's Industrial and Commercial Development Committee that it has some plans in the works that could help start filling the industrial park that is currently only home to the Ohio Department of Transportation's county garage.

The duo said they have received significant interest from two state agencies looking at building new local headquarters in the park and from another fledgling metal material processing client that would utilize the spec building and two surrounding acres.

"We have all heard these wonderful ideas before on how things will work," Dickens said. "Hopefully, this will but we are not going to guarantee that it will work out."

Still, everyone in the group that included Mayor John Elam, engineer Phil Biggs and most of council was excited.

"You have to have a seed," Slagel said, adding that the presence of ODOT can only help attract other state agencies. "You have to have a place to start."

The governmental agencies could create as many 15 new jobs and relocate at least that many more to Ironton as part of the separate projects that could top $2 million in development if they come to fruition. Nothing will likely happen before spring, Dickens said.

The other project, which would create approximately eight jobs initially but as many as 300 as a best case scenario within three years, has been put on the fasttrack to reality.

Port Authority officials hope to finalize the entity's charter next week and have the city deed the building and two acres over to it so negotiations can begin.

While not wanting to get their hopes up, everyone said they were encouraged by the group's efforts in the industrial park as well as for downtown and riverfront revitalization efforts.

"Small industry and start-up industry is going to be the lifeblood of any development that is going to happen in Ironton," Councilman Brent Pyles said.

Now they just hope it happens times three.