MAC Trailer in Kent...

It’s official — MAC Trailer purchased the old Fontaine facility on Fairchild Avenue last week and they are already busy working to get their Kent operations up and running asap. 

The arrival of MAC Trailer in Kent is a great example how the City can help connect interested buyers and willing sellers.  In this case, Dan Smith, the City’s Economic Development Director, had an opportunity to hear a presentation on the success of this rapidly growing truck manufacturing company out of Alliance Ohio and he immediately thought of the vacant Fontaine Trailer manufacturing site on Fairchild Avenue as an expansion opportunity.

The Fontaine property had been looked at by a tire reclaiming/recycling company last year but it turned out to be a less than ideal fit given the close proximity of the property to residential neighborhoods and the company’s plans to store tires in piles outside of the building. 

When Dan heard about MAC Trailer’s growth plans, he went to work pitching Kent to the MAC Trailer folks and contacting the property owners about this prospective buyer.

I’d like to say everything was smooth sailing, but if we’ve learned anything from our development deals, we’ve learned that nothing is easy — especially the really good stuff. 

So like any real estate transaction there was a fair amount of negotiations going back and forth that had us on pins and needles for weeks.  The City did whatever we could, including lining up local and state tax breaks for MAC Trailer to help the deal hit their financial requirements but it still came down to the wire before we finally heard on Friday that the deal was done. 

MAC Trailer is a great company, and they’re a great fit for the Fairchild property, so there was a lot of fist pumping and high fives going around the office on Friday.  Take a look at MAC’s employment projections and I think you’ll see why Dan was doing the robot dance in the conference room:

1ST YEAR EMPLOYMENT NUMBERS
•OFFICE WORKERS – 10 
•SALES – 1
•ENGINEERS – 4
•MANAGEMENT – 2
•SUPERVISORS – 5
•SHOP PERSONNEL – 106
•TOTAL – 128

2ND YEAR EMPLOYMENT NUMBERS
•OFFICE WORKERS – 12
•SALES – 2
•ENGINEERS – 5
•MANAGEMENT – 3
•SUPERVISORS – 7
•SHOP PERSONNEL – 217
•TOTAL – 246 

MAC Trailer is a great example of focusing on helping a local company grow rather than trying to woo companies from out of state to make Kent their home away from home.  I’m not opposed to wooing out of staters but when you look at what it takes these days to out-compete all of the other communities that are trying to woo that same company, it seems to us that we stand a much better chance at having success with companies that are already here but are growing too fast to fit in their current buildings.  We love those companies and MAC Trailer shows why. 

Kent Police Web Site...

The Kent Police staff have been working for some time on updating their web presence to offer a little more insight into who they are, what they’re working on, and who to contact if you need help.  It turns out that they’ve officially launched their Kent Police Web page today and I’m happy to promote it.

Here’s the link:  http://www.kentpd.org/

In light of these not so friendly economic times, much to my chagrin the City hasn’t been able to find funds to hire an IT staff — not even a staff of one — so we all do our best to take advantage of the free-ware on the web and learn by trial and error how to plug in and represent on the internet. 

As a result, we’ve got a couple of different web sites that relate to City business, and while admittedly that may not be the best way to have a web presence, it turns out to be the most practical and in this case, we figure good is better than best since best isn’t particularly possible right now. 

Critics could point to the lack of branding on our sites and our less than leading edge navigation tools, but considering in just about every case employees taught themselves (often on their personal time) how to get the City to join the ranks of other cities on the web (who usually have funds and staff dedicated to web support), there’s a part of me that’s proud of our hodge-podge. 

That doesn’t mean I don’t aspire to pull them all together under one roof and have a wow-site for Kent (which I actually have beta versions of in development), but I’m practical and patient, so until we find a golden goose wandering the streets of Kent, I’m pleased with what our employees have been able to do on their own by their own computer bootstraps.

Catching Up...

Yikes, where does the time go? 

With everything we’ve got started around town, the fun stuff — like blog posts — have been hard to squeeze in.  So please forgive the drop-off in blog productivity but it’s a direct correlation to the workload that we’re carrying right now. 

Here’s a couple of announcements for upcoming events around town that seemed rather blog-worthy — and given my uncertain posting schedule I figure I better get this stuff out while I have a minute.  

1) Cuyahoga River Clean Up — Bob Brown, City Water Reclamation Plant Manager, asked for my help to get the word out that the next annual river clean up is set for Saturday, August 27th.  Bob reports that they will again be targeting the area upstream of the Crain Ave. Bridge while we still have access to the track hoe at the construction site.  Bob’s looking for volunteers to be part of the river clean up team but he notes that this section of the river is more difficult than most, due to the high banks, so volunteers need to be a reasonably sturdy lot and in relatively good physical condition to handle the terrain.  The volunteers typically meet on site at 9 am. 

2)Free Movie Downtown — There’s something about entertainment out under the stars in the summer that makes drive-ins and venues like Blossom Amphitheater and Kent’s Home Savings Plaza so popular.  Lawn chairs, a blanket and a good show make for a great date, and Standing Rock Gallery in downtown Kent is happy to oblige for couples and families alike.  Standing Rock has announced their plans to show The Point!, on Friday, August 26th at dusk, on the Home Savings Bank Plaza.  If you want to learn more of this much loved fable story, follow this link.

Courtney Nething Watt, new owner and lead instructor

3)Franklin School of Dance Grand Re-Opening — Grab your dancing shoes and bust a move to help the Franklin School of Dance celebrate their grand re-opening (after 75 years!) on 152 N. Water Street in downtown Kent.  As part of the reopening the owners will host an open house and class registration event on Saturday, August 20 from 1-5 p.m. at its updated studio. All are welcome to attend.  Click here for more details.

CSX National Gateway Project Through Kent...

In the last month the Wheeling and Lake Erie railroad tracks that run behind (and serve) the Star of the West Mill in downtown Kent were raised about 4′ as part of the Crain/Fairchild Avenue bridge project.  This makes for a little roller coaster effect at the existing Crain Avenue bridge but that will go away once traffic is turned over to the new bridge and the old bridge is in turn torn down and replaced with the new hike and bike trail bridge. 

As the transition from the old Crain Avenue bridge to the new Fairchild Avenue bridge work continues, the raising of the tracks was a critical milestone that is good example of  how many moving parts there are to this large and complex project.   

At the risk of oversimplifying, follow me for a minute:  the City’s bridge design engineer had to gain the support of Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad to lift their (upper) tracks 4 feet so that the superstructure of the new roadway bridge would be high enough over CSX’s lower tracks to allow CSX to progress with their National Gateway Project which commits to having double stack capabilities for the rail that runs thru downtown Kent all the way down to Wilmington North Carolilna.  

Wheeling and Lake Erie had to be assured that their business clients that they serve along those tracks — particularly Star of the West Mill in downtown Kent — would not be adversely effected, so the City had to design around some very specific rail transportation needs for Star of the West while assuring the neighboring businesses around the mill that raising the tracks was going to work for their business as well. 

Then, the City first had to coordinate the construction of these plans with all of the utility companies that criss-cross below the bridge and use the rail corridor as conduits for their utilities, and then with ODOT and their bridge contractor (and don’t forget all their respective sub-contractors) to make sure that everybody hit all the elevations at all the right times so that the of their individual pieces of the project line up and come together within the very narrow space allotted to each element of the project.  There’s nothing worse than a blown elevation and this project had Himalayan-esque elevations to deal with.    

Throw in the fact that this is perhaps the busiest traffic intersection in the City, and it runs above the busiest rail corridor in the mid-west, and you get a flavor for how unbelievably constrained the project was for the folks tasked with making it happen.  That’s why there was a collective sense of relief last week — at least for 5 minutes until it was on to the next 6,547 milestones (my number, not the engineers) left to hit before this project will officially be complete. 

——————————-

As noted above, one of the main drivers of the engineering behind the new bridge was accomodating the CSX National Gateway Project.  The Project is touted as one of the most significant transportation investments in decades.  I’m fairly certain that there were many headaches added to the City’s bridge project because of the CSX project but admittedly, long-term, the Gateway project will significantly increase rail capacity that serves Kent, and to that end, a few headaches in the name of progress is probably worth it. 

The impacts of the CSX Gateway project isn’t limited to the Crain Avenue bridge, it will also be seen in the Middlebury Road railroad corridor, and further up the Lake Street/Riverbend rail corridor, as CSX and it’s contractors will have to elevate additional structures along the tracks that currently limit overhead clearance.  Here’s some more information from the CSX National Gateway website that gives a description of all the work they plan to do from Ohio to North Carolina to complete their $700 million investment (approximately $21 million in Kent).

Background