County lands $335K grant for road work

CELINA - Officials on Tuesday learned Mercer County has been awarded a $335,000 grant to make highway improvements in conjunction with Mercer Landmark's proposed $26 million expansion outside of St. Henry.

The county has now secured more than $600,000 in state grant funds to help accommodate Mercer Landmark's purchase of an 18-acre site at the intersection of Carthagena Road and State Route 118 and planned construction of a new feed mill and processing plant.

The $335,000 Roadwork Development 629 Grant comes through Ohio Development Services Agency. The money will be used to install turn lanes near the new facility "so that if trucks are turning in, there's widened pavement where cars can go around and trucks can turn in without any issues," county community development director Jared Ebbing said in September.

In October, officials also learned they'd been awarded a $300,000 Community Development Block Grant through the Economic Development Loan and Public Infrastructure Program, also administered by ODSA.

Those dollars will be used to extend water and sewer utilities from St. Henry to the site, Ebbing said, adding that village officials likely will eventually annex the property.

Ebbing expects both projects will get underway this summer.

The state funding requires the county to providing matching funds of just under $100,000, Ebbing noted. The local share will be paid through the conveyance account. The county receives a real estate conveyance fee of $1 per $1,000 of property sold to support its community development office and strengthen the local workforce.

Putting up $100,000 in local funds to capture more than $600,000 in state grant dollars makes sense since the overall project "improves that corridor for future growth," Ebbing said.

Landmark's expansion, Ebbing asserted, will trigger a "ripple effect."

"If it helps a local company create that many jobs … the impact on our economy is a big deal," he said. "So it's not just that company, those jobs; it's all the fingers that it reaches in our ag industry as a whole.

"Now we have water and sewer all the way out to Carthagena Road and a turn lane for that future development. That's where growth can occur," he continued.

County commissioners in September agreed to issue $459,500 in revolving loan funds to Mercer Landmark to help it purchase the property from Donald and Verena Evers, according to Renee Muhlenkamp, assistant director of the county's community development office.

Mercer Landmark could have gone elsewhere to expand where more livestock is being raised, such as in Indiana. But cooperative officials felt it was important to keep their presence in southern Mercer County, Ebbing has pointed out.

The revolving loan must be paid back over 10 years at 3 percent interest, according to Ebbing.

Mercer Landmark intends to use numerous funding sources to pay for its proposed expansion: the county loan, $12.47 million in equity, $635,000 in state and local funds, and $12.471 million from a private lender.

The locally owned farm cooperative with 19 facilities in Mercer, Darke, Van Wert, Paulding and Defiance counties, has plans to create the new animal feed production facility due to new regulations, Ebbing has said.

"With the new Food Safety and Modernization Act ... animal feed has become more under the regulations of food production," Ebbing told commissioners. "Therefore, with the changes they have to modernize some of their facilities."

The new facility will "be quite large," Ebbing has said, noting it will process 140 tons of grain an hour, compared with the Celina branch, which processes 65 tons an hour.

"This facility will be a major production for their poultry (and) swine feed," he has said.

Previous calls to the company for comment were unreturned.

The new operation would add 43 jobs, increasing its total employment in the St. Henry area to 59. Ebbing confirmed that some of the new jobs would be ancillary, such as truck-driving positions.

Ebbing has noted that Mercer Landmark would maintain its current St. Henry branch at 281 W. Main St. as well as its Chickasaw branch.