By Sharon Michael, The Chronicle, 4/13/98
Draper Valley Farms notified Port of Centralia officials Friday the chicken-processing company will not build a new plant in Centralia.
"It just became really clear that costs were a barrier," port director Wendy Paulin said this morning.
Cost estimates for the Centralia plant had escalated from $10 million to more than $18 million in the year since the company picked the port-owned property as a potential site.
The plant would have employed between 200 and 300 people by the end of its first year of operation.
In January, the company requested a six-month extension of its option on the planned site. The company was given until July 31 to meet conditions for a $750,000 city-sponsored state economic development loan to extend roads and utilities to the plant site.
"We will drop the CERB loan unless we can get a new agreement with them," Paulin said today.
But Paulin said it's not likely the port will be able to reach an agreement with a new client soon enough to save the Community, Trade and Economic Development loan.
"We're working with a lot of other companies," Paulin said. "But no one that's going to make a decision in the next few weeks."
It took Draper Valley Farms, a family-owned Mount Vernon chicken-processing company, three years to settle on Centralia as a potential site for a planned 750,000-square-foot plant.
Centralia was attractive to Draper Valley because of location and a good labor pool.
The company has a number of contract growers in Lewis County, and plans to expand into Oregon markets.
"They had other options available to them," Paulin explained. "That's real typical in the things we try to put together.
"We're disappointed, but this happens a lot. It's difficult to land a company," she added.
Draper Valley Farms has a good reputation with Mount Vernon city officials, regulatory agencies and employee union officials. Local opponents to the company focused on concerns about the industry's safety record, and on the company's high-volume water usage and wastewater discharge.