What about WhiteRock?
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By Dave Taylor
Thursday’s announcement that a company would be spending millions of dollars to locate in the vacant former Alcoa building and bring lots of new jobs to Hancock County was reminiscent of a headline grabbing announcement in 2017 that a company would spend $179 million and bring 124 jobs to the county using that same Alcoa site.
WhiteRock Pigments, LLC announced in October 2017 that it had been given preliminary approval for state tax incentives and that it was planning to buy the vacant building and would begin producing pigment materials using a proprietary green process, but the company struggled to acquire the necessary funding to begin.
Now with the Owensboro startup Envision Modular LLC announcing that it has been given preliminary approval for state tax incentives to buy the Alcoa building and fabricate finished sections of commercial buildings, the question remains of what will happen to the WhiteRock plan.
According to the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA), which approves the incentives, both plans were active in their system as of this week, with the incentives not actually beginning until either company follows through on buying the property and meeting other negotiated targets on things like numbers of employees.
But with the announcement of Envision Modular’s plan, does that mean the end of WhiteRock Pigments? Not necessarily.
Envision representatives have said the company plans to use just 200,000 square feet of the more than 300,000 square feet that’s under roof at the Alcoa building, with the remainder open for any good opportunities that come along.
“We think that there’s opportunity, not only for that site as far as our modular facility, but it also potentially leaves additional space not only for expansion but for other enterprises,” said Ed Ray, COO of Gulfstream Commercial Services, which is affiliated with Envision through common ownership.
“We’ve been told… that they wanted to speak to us and we would still be interested in coming there,” WhiteRock CEO Bob Meyer said Monday afternoon.
“We haven’t spoken to them yet,” he said, but added, “We are interested.”
WhiteRock was hampered by a loss of a key investor early on, and by a long lead time needed to produce the machinery that was required for its production process, but Meyer said he’s still hoping to move forward with his plan to locate in the county, potentially in the same site as originally planned, through an agreement with Envision.
“We had more than enough space, so it depends on how much of it they’re using, which I really don’t know,” Meyer said. “We’d have to see what is available, but with a lot of land there, obviously you can add buildings to it.”
Even using just a portion of the entire building Meyer said he thinks WhiteRock could still follow through with most of its original plan.
“I don’t know what the opportunity still holds, but I would think there would still be an opportunity for us to go full-scale,” he said.
If Envision Modular and WhiteRock can work out an agreement, Hancock County could potentially wind up with the jobs and capital investment hailed in both announcements.
“There are multiple buildings and I have not had any discussions with WhiteRock,” said Ray, “but certainly if they had an interest in part of the site, we certainly would be willing to continue discussions and see what they had in mind.”
dave.hancockclarion
@gmail.com
