Crane Industrial Park lures companies with land

In a time when the labor market is tight and many rural communities are jumping on the industrial park bandwagon, the owners of the Crane Industrial Park are hoping that their offer free land will attract companies to the small southwest Missouri town.

Kenn Ragland, president of the Stone County Bank in Crane, and a member of the Crane Industrial Park board of directors, said the land has always been available at no charge to qualified businesses, but he said the board only recently decided to use the word "free" to promote the location.

"We have utilities in, everything is there ... we will consider interested industrial businesses, but we do need to have certain information and commitments," he said.

He added that the town wants businesses that don't pollute, and he said there are several other factors that determine whether a company will be given free use of the land, on 40 acres off Highway 13 about 2 1/2 miles south of Crane's downtown area.

"The number of jobs, pay, type, how compatible it is with our town and the surrounding area, and the type (of) employees they need," he said.

"We need to know what their wage range is, the amount of land they need, the type of structure they will be building, utility requirements ... we also need some evidence pretty early on of their financial capability," Ragland said.

Crane Industrial Park is owned by the Crane Broiler Festival Association, a not-for-profit organization that holds an annual event featuring barbecued chicken dinners prepared over open-pit fires, to raise money for community betterment projects.

Eddie Bowling, treasurer and past president of the CBFA's board of directors, said the organization has owned the industrial park land for eight to 10 years.

Bowling said the land was originally purchased by a group of local business people who wanted to bring an industrial development to Crane.

He said the group was not a formal organization, and it determined that it would be better for a local organization to own the land, so they sold it to the CBFA.

"The Crane Broiler Festival Association is a very viable, not-for-profit organization ... they were the logical choice to be able to pay the individuals back their original purchase money," Bowling said.

Ragland said if a company does meet the specifications to move into the CIP, it can use the land free of charge, but Bowling said if the company sells, it has to pay for it.

"If companies who use the land for no charge sell or liquidate or anything of that nature, the board expects to be paid. If the company sells to another company, we don't want them to profit from the land that we gave them," Bowling said.

"But if they construct the building and are in business forever, the land would not cost them a dime."

Right now, Five Star Manufacturing is the only company in Crane's industrial park. A second business, the Peterson Farms poultry processing plant, burned down a few years ago, Ragland said, leaving about 400 workers without jobs.

Five Star Manufacturing recently underwent its third expansion since moving to the park, said Jim Woodward, who is the company's president and one of its owners. He said with the 10 jobs created by the expansion, the company now has about 35 employees.

Woodward said the exterior expansion is complete, but he still has some work to do on the interior, which he plans to have finished by Nov. 15.

Woodward said the industrial park would be a good opportunity for companies that have the industry to build there.

Ragland said the employee base is available in Crane and the surrounding area.

He said Crane has a population of 1,250 people, but there aren't any large industrial employers in the town.