Mount Pleasant industry poised to grow

Part of a monthly series looking at economic issues in small towns

Mount Pleasant is known for its annual Midwest Old Threshers Reunion that draws thousands of visitors to the community each September.

It's also home to a 1.3-million-square-foot Wal-Mart Distribution Center, the largest employer in the community with 600 workers, and other companies involved in meat processing, fundraising for not-for-profit organizations, injection molding, and envelope, hose and fireplace manufacturing.

Many Mount Pleasant employers are poised to grow, if they can find employees with the right skills.

'This is a huge slicing plant for lunch meat,' said Joe Thompson, West Liberty Foods plant manager. 'We have 22 (production) lines, and five of them are idle right now.

'It's not just finding people who can do the work, but also people with the technical background for maintenance and those with leadership ability.'

The 84,000-square-foot West Liberty Foods plant, which supplies sliced turkey to Subway and other customers it declined to name, is the third-largest employer in the community with 515 workers. Daniel Waters, West Liberty Foods corporate counsel, said Mount Pleasant has been supportive of the West Liberty-based co-op owned turkey processor.

'When we've wanted to expand, the city has helped us acquire parcels of land,' Waters said. 'We've had nothing but a positive experience working with city and economic development officials.'

Delia Garcia, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, said the company's general merchandise distribution center, which supplies 94 stores in Iowa, western Illinois and northeast Missouri, opened in 1985. She said city officials have been supportive each time the facility has been expanded.

'Our distribution center opened with 600,000 square feet,' Garcia said. 'In 1998, it was expanded to 1 million square feet as we added additional stores in the region. It grew again by 300,000 square feet in 2001.'

Garcia said Wal-Mart is continually adding employees due to turnover and attrition, drawing its work force from communities in the region. She said the center, which will mark its 30th anniversary in July, has a number of longtime employees.

'We have 51 associates who are celebrating 30 years,' Garcia said. 'We also have about 250 associates who are celebrating 20 years or more.'

Mount Pleasant's industrial base has changed over the years as some fairly large employers closed up shop.

For decades, two-way radios and other products were produced at the Motorola plant, and yellow school buses rolled off the assembly line at Blue Bird Midwest.

In December 2000, Motorola sold its Mount Pleasant plants to Celestica of Toronto, Canada, as part of a corporate strategy to outsource some of its manufacturing and slash costs. Celestica merged the operations at two Mount Pleasant locations into a single plant and eliminated 140 of 670 jobs.

In February 2005, the other shoe dropped as Celestica announced plans to phase out its Mount Pleasant plant, idling more than 300 employees.

Blue Bird Midwest initially announced a temporary plant shutdown in August 2001. That was a prelude to a permanent closure announced in February 2002 that let go 350 employees of the plant that had opened in 1962.

Innovairre Iowa, the second-largest Mount Pleasant employer with about 525 permanent and seasonal employees, has operations in a building that formerly housed a Motorola plant as well as two other locations.

The company, which opened a facility in Mount Pleasant as O.E. McIntyre in the 1960s, is a fundraiser for March of Dimes and more than 500 charities across five continents.

Bill Tallent, senior vice president of Innovairre Iowa, said the company does the majority of its print production in Mount Pleasant. The company's Mount Pleasant operation has transitioned over time from primarily manual clerical work to a very digital environment with technical positions that require specific skills sets, he said.

'Finding employees has been a challenge,' Tallent said. 'I think we would have more employees if they were more readily available.

'Our north building is all digital printing. All of our press technology is very digital in terms of how it is controlled.'

Tallent, who came to Mount Pleasant in 2012, said the community needs to develop additional single-family homes and rental housing.

'Mount Pleasant needs a housing industry,' he said. 'We need someone to build homes for people who want to trade up as well as those who want to move here for employment in the community.'

Travis Kraus, executive vice president of the Mount Pleasant Area Chamber Alliance, agreed that new housing is a major challenge for the community. He said local developers are creating a growing number of apartments above stores in the downtown area.

'I feel the solution is public-private partnerships where we eliminate some of the risk for developers in some capacity,' Kraus said. 'We also need to work with lenders to get loans flowing.'

Kraus said Mount Pleasant has worked to add amenities such as five miles of biking and walking trails that provide an alternative to driving for employees at West Liberty Foods and other businesses.

The community plans to apply for a state Resource Enhancement and Protection grant to connect the trails, creating a network around Mount Pleasant that will provide greater access, according to Lisa Oetken, director of Mount Pleasant's Main Street program.

Carla McNamee, vice president and general manager of the Hearth & Home Technologies' fireplace plant that employs about 200, said Mount Pleasant has a lot to offer younger families in terms of quality schools and a smaller community to raise their children.

'We need to continue focusing on growing the amenities that the younger generation is looking for in a community,' McNamee said.

Kraus said Mount Pleasant has been able to fill all of the industrial buildings vacated when employers such as Blue Bird Midwest and Celestica left. He said that has left his organization with a different challenge.

'Without new construction, we don't have a large inventory for new recruitment,' Kraus said. 'We have a lot of room to grow in Mount Pleasant and we're certainly open to anyone looking at green field construction of a new building.'

Mount Pleasant's Largest employers

Wal-Mart Distribution Center — 600

Innovairre Iowa — 525

West Liberty Foods — 515

Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility — 397

Mount Pleasant Comm. School District — 325

Henry County Health Center — 245

Veyance Technologies — 250

MackayMitchell Envelope Co. — 184

Hearth & Home Technologies — 200

Wal-Mart Supercenter — 123 F/T, 125 P/T

Lomont Molding — 122 F/T, 123 P/T

Iowa Wesleyan College — 122 F/T, 41 P/T

Nypro Kanaak Iowa — 98

Source: Mount Pleasant Area Chamber Alliance