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$27 million cheese plant to be built in Mountain Home
City, state and company officials announced Monday that Marathon Cheese, one of the nation's largest cheese packaging companies, will expand its operations by building a $27 million facility in Mountain Home.
The new manufacturing plant, to be located on 40 acres of land just west of Optimist Park, will hire approximately 250 people initially, rising to an anticipated 500 employees within 5 years, paying basic salaries in the $10-$15 range, plus a full benefit package that includes health insurance, life insurance and a retirement plan.
The state of Idaho has committed nearly $2.2 million in grants and incentives to help locate the plant here.
For weeks there had been rumors of a "major announcement" involving a "major employer" coming to Mountain Home, but it took weeks to get all the paperwork finalized, after six months of negotiations, to bring the firm here.
The formal announcement was made at Optimist Park Monday before a crowd of approximately 250 people, with red-white-and blue balloons and American flags surrounding a podium put up for dignitaries and a tent erected for observers.
Among the dignitaries who spoke at the ceremony was Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, who, along with Mayor McNeal, the city council and city employees, was praised by company officials for his "hands on" efforts to work with the company in bringing the plant to Mountain Home.
Ron Swearingen, who heads the city's economic development office, called the announcement "the biggest economic news since Mountain Home Air Force Base opened more than 50 years ago.
"This is a first-class company," Swearingen said, noting that more than 20 percent of the company's current workforce of 1,600 employees in three other midwest plants have worked for the company for 25 years or more. "Any city in the United States would be thrilled to have Marathon Cheese locate in their community," he said.
Site work on the facility is expected to begin in the next few weeks, with construction of the huge manufacturing plant starting around the first of the year and completion targeted for next September.
The company is working with the Selland College of Technology at Boise State University to set up training programs for workers and will open an office at the Job Service building across from the golf course to begin hiring employees some time in late spring.
The plant will not process cheese. Instead, it will receive supplies of already processed cheese from suppliers throughout the western United States, most arriving in 640-lb. blocks, and then cut and package the cheese for its customers, which include some of the largest cheese companies in the United States, such as Kraft.
The company, based in Marathon, Wisc., 90 miles west of the more famous Green Bay, currently packages over one million pounds of cheese a day at its three current plants, two in Wisconsin and one in Mississippi.
The Mountain Home plant, selected by the company after an exhaustive search for locations throughout the western U.S., will be built in an area that will be known as the Stan Scott Industrial Park.
Scott, along with his partners, originally owned the 40 acres of land where the plant will be located but donated it to the city in exchange for extending city services to the rest of his property surrounding the site.
Scott said he and his partners believe "it will be very beneficial to the community. We need more (economic) diversity here, and this should help stabilize and energize our economy."
John Skoug, chairman and CEO of Marathon Cheese, said the company had been looking to expand to the West Coast to better meet the needs of its customers, and selected Mountain Home based on the incentives offered by the city and state and the high quality of the labor force available.
The state has promised to provide up to $1.65 million in Idaho Workforce Development Training Funds, to train workers for the new plant, $550,000 in Idaho Community Development Block Grant money to help pay for extensions of roads, water and sewer lines, and other infrastructure to the plant, and about $50,000 in grants from the Gem Community Program.
The city has provided the land (donated by Scott and his partners) and has agreed to create an Urban Renewal District to help support the development. That district would include parts of downtown and some city land at the end of 6th Street, would have a board of commissioners and would be able to levy taxes to help support development and redevelopment in the area, according to Mayor Joe B. McNeal.
In addition, the city has agreed to make some changes at Optimist Park to accommodate the new plant and roads leading to it.
McNeal said the mud bog area and the stillborn stock car track almost certainly will be eliminated, "but we'll try to move them. A lot will depend on the Urban Renewal District." It is possible other facilities at the park may be moved or altered to accommodate the plant, but those details are still being worked out. McNeal insisted the only facilities currently expected to be affected were the mud bog and race track sections, however.
When completed and fully operational, the plant will be either the second or third largest employer in the county, behind only the airbase and possibly the school district.
Mayor McNeal, in remarks at Monday's ceremony, noted that "this is the beginning of a lasting partnership," between the city and Marathon Cheese.
Marathon CEO Skoug said he'd never seen anything like the reception the company received Monday for their announcement and groundbreaking.
The search process to find a new plant site, he told the crowd, had taken over a year, "but what started as a daunting task became simpler over time," because of the involvement and enthusiasm of the city and state officials. Describing Mayor McNeal, tongue in cheek, as "soft-spoken, mild-mannered and subdued," he said "his enthusiasm was infectious."
"Mountain Home is the place we want to be...," he said, noting "Mountain Home possesses an excellent source of labor and a quality of life that will allow us to recruit both locally and nationally."
He said he believed the company and the Scott Industrial Park would be an asset to the community, and thanked everyone involved for bringing the project to fruition.
Company President LaVern Stencil offered some history of the company, noting it was a family owned business founded in 1952, and that the company's success had been based on its longstanding commitment to excellence and the use of the latest technologies.
Gov. Kempthorne called Marathon Cheese "one of the great companies" in the United States, especially in terms of its concern for the well-being of its workforce.
Citing the commitment of Marathon Cheese, and several other major companies from east of the Rockies to locate major facilities in Idaho, he said it was an example of the fact that "Idaho is being discovered" as a great place to locate business.
"We now have three legs to our economy," McNeal said, "the base, agriculture and manufacturing."