Years of moving his own business inspire Jerry Winkley to start a business park

Between starting a ServiceMaster franchise in 1988 and selling it in 2014, Jerry Winkley says he moved his business a number of times. Those moves, including some where he was trying to avoid places that weren’t safe after dark, are now inspiring a new venture for him.

“I always wished I could help people looking for the places I was when I was growing my business,” he says.

That’s why he’s now starting the Winkley Business Park at 4709 N. Hydraulic, which is just north of 135 and 254.

Winkley initially plans to develop half of the 9-acre park.

“I’ve got plenty of room for now.”

In the first phase of the park, Winkley will have what he calls small business units with 14-foot overhead doors and, in larger units, walk-in doors for office use.

Each unit will have parking as well.

Winkley, who already owns Store In a Wink, also will offer climate-controlled storage.

“I have some customers who have been renting in my storage that would like more space, so I’m hoping some of them will come over,” he says.

There also will be some outside storage for small businesses that have equipment that’s fine to keep outside but that they may want to have a more secure area to store.

Winkley says he’ll have some RV parking as well.

“It seems like people have a hard time finding a nice, secure place to park them.”

Currently, the park is an open field.

Winkley says he’s still working on getting confirmation, but people in the know have told him the park’s property was one of the original homesteads in the county.

“We have two old Oak trees that have probably been around since Jesse Chisholm was herding cattle through here, so we’ve designed our plan around keeping the two oldest trees,” he said in an e-mail when he shared some photos.

Winkley plans a Jan. 17 groundbreaking. He purposely chose that date because it would have been his late mother’s 98th birthday.

He says Annie Jean Winkley was hit by a drunk driver when he was 9, and she was handicapped for the rest of her life.

Winkley says his mother “always kind of set an example for our family to not give up.”

He says she was “always supportive over the years,” so the groundbreaking is fitting for her birthday.

“We thought we would do it in her honor.”