Clear Lake officials say they’ve landed a regional warehouse and distribution facility proposed by a mystery Fortune 100 company. The $65-million project will encompass the building of a 340,000 square foot warehouse and will bring 164 full-time jobs.
Clear Lake city administrator Scott Flory says the hard work of city and county officials has paid off. Flory says it’s something future generations will appreciate for a long time, saying it’s an opportunity for many of the residents to work for a Fortune 100 company which is rare in the state. Flory says even with the announcement that the company is coming to Clear Lake, the company’s name will remain confidential for about the next 18 months until the construction of the distribution facility is completed.
He says these are standard business concerns for a publicly-traded company and premature disclosure of this information possibly could result in adverse effects. Flory says it’s not uncommon for a company to not want to reveal who they are in a project like this, and he speculates it will be more common in the future.
He heard of a similar arrangement in Fort Dodge just a few days ago. “They also have a Fortune 500 company that has a much, much smaller scale, but it’s an identical situation where they aren’t releasing the company’s name until the building is built,” Flory says.
He says they’ve been active with the project’s engineers and architects in recent months and they expect groundbreaking on the project should come sometime this spring. He says they’re well underway with the site plan, with that to go to the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission sometime later this month. He says things are proceeding at a fast pace, with the only concern at this point being how fast the frost will come out of the ground so they can be aggressive with the project.
In addition to the 164 permanent jobs created, the project will create up to 385 one-time construction jobs with an estimated payroll of $14 million. An estimated 107 indirect and induced jobs will also be added to the regional economy over ten years as a result of the project, with the project’s total economic impact reaching nearly $306 million over ten years.
(Reporting by Bob Fisher, KRIB, Mason City)
