Programs available to help find new Simply Essentials plant owner

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

There are a number of financial incentives and programs available that could help a new business move into the closed Simply Essentials plant in Charles City, but so far there has been little apparent action.

Tim Fox, the executive director of the Charles City Area Development Corp., gave a brief report at the group’s regular monthly meeting Wednesday on progress finding a new occupant for the chicken processing facility that closed Aug. 5, eliminating more than 500 jobs.

“The status update is I know nothing,” Fox said. “I was supposed to have a conference call with property brokers today, but everybody was moving in different directions, so it didn’t happen. I don’t know what that means, if that’s a good thing, not a good thing. We’ll see when we get it rescheduled.”

Fox has said before that Simple Essentials and its parent company, Pittman Family Farms of Fresno, California, have shown little cooperation in setting up a job fair or helping market the plant since its closure was announced in early June.

Fox said “one of the things we want to make clear” is that there are programs available that could help a new owner financially.

They include the property being in an Opportunity Zone, in a New Market Tax Credit Zone, in a tax increment financing (TIF) district and having Work Opportunity Tax Credits available.

“There should be some juice there” for any company that wants to look at it and get serious about acquiring the property, he said.

Fox said a community job fair held Aug. 13 at the high school gym — for former Simply Essentials employees but also for anyone else interested — attracted 48 companies including 13 from Floyd County.

He said that at least one local company, Zoetis, considered the job fair a success and had made employment offers to several people, but he didn’t know if they were former Simply Essentials employees.

Also at the Area Development Corp. meeting Wednesday:

• Fox gave an update on the status of the 75-acre state-certified industrial development site the organization is creating on property at the intersection of the Avenue of the Saints and South Grand Avenue.

The final items required for site program accreditation were transmitted Friday morning, and the ADC should learn next week whether any of the reports require additional detail or changes, he said.

State certification means an industrial development site is essentially “shovel ready” for a business to buy and build on, with all the required surveys, inspections and environmental reports already done and utility infrastructure in place or available within 6 months.

The city of Charles City is planning on selling bonds to purchase the $2.16 million property and give it to the ADC to market, then repay the bonds through tax increment financing district revenue and eventually through the sale of the property.

Fox presented the final version of a development agreement between the city and the ADC, and the ADC members agreed to hold an email vote next Wednesday on approving the agreement, after having some time to review it.

Fox said he would like to get the agreement approved before the next regular monthly meeting so that it would be ready at about the same time they expect the site to be certified.

• Heard a report on a construction project at Croell Inc. to create an 80,000-square-foot storage building for cement powder at its facility on 210th Street/11th Street.

Jeremy Bahe, project manager at Croell, said flooding this spring caused a cement shortage because barges were not able to come up the Mississippi from St. Louis, and Lehigh Cement Co. in Mason City depleted its resources because of the demand.

“Croell might take 60 to 70 tanker loads of cement out of Mason City a day, and we’ve been limited to 30 for the last couple of months because of the shortage,” Bahe said.

The storage facility in Charles City will hold 70,000 tons of cement powder, he said, which is enough to mix about 315,000 cubic yards of concrete.

“This building will allow us to stockpile cement powder all year long and if we run into this shortage again we can take out of our own resources rather than run at a slower capacity or switch vendors at our cost,” Bahe said.

“We have a similar building in Mason City, but it’s almost empty now after going through this spring,” he said.

Fox said Croell could have built the storage building at any of its 28 sites in Iowa, “so we’re glad they selected Charles City for that investment.”