One hundred new jobs paying $18 per hour could be coming soon to the Stewart/Houston Industrial Park.
The stage is set for local officials in the bi-county area to close a deal with a potential new industry that — if the deal goes through — will bring at least one hundred new, good-paying jobs to the Stewart/Houston Industrial Park.
SHIP Board members are in negotiations with an entity going by the pseudonym of “Project Ocean Blue” for sale of the park’s empty speculative building. The resolution to land the industry that will bring 100 new jobs to our area, hire a local plant manager and get the seven-year-old $1.1 million spec building off the books and into use.
Project Ocean Blue is a farm implement manufacturing company, officials say. Some of their biggest clients include John Deere and Tractor Supply Company. Project Ocean Blue has already relocated a sister plant to Carroll County in West Tennessee. Ocean Blue will buy the empty speculative building and will invest $10 million in capital improvements to the building.
Commissioners in Houston and Stewart counties and the SHIP Board want to sell the $1.1 million building to ‘Ocean Blue’ for $800,000. Believe it or not, if they go for it, that is a good deal for not only Houston and Stewart Counties, but for the entire LBLUS.com region.
The jobs will pay $18 per hour and Workforce Essentials will invest $100,000 in training and workforce development. Highland Rim Economic Corporation has its main Head Start office and complex nearby and will be working with SHIP to provide childcare for workers at the new plant, if it comes. — Remember, the operative word is — IF! It looks good, but the deal has yet to be approved by the suits that run Ocean Blue,.
On Monday the Stewart County Commission unanimously passed a resolution giving the company tax breaks over the next fifteen years to the tune of — they will pay no taxes for ten years and will have 75 percent of their taxes abated for the next five years after that initial ten with no tax payment. And, yes, that is a pretty good deal also.
Let’s face it .. no industry has been crying its eyes out to locate at the SHIP park for the past while. That spec building has languished empty for seven years and to my knowledge has only been used on Halloween for a haunted house and it was not even a haunted house, it was just parking for a haunted house across the street.
This story will update.
Story and Photos by David R. Ross, LBLUS.com
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