Regional Teamwork Pays Off
How Mount Pleasant and the state courted Newly Weds Foods
Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the March/April 2009 issue of Texas Rising.
A new plant opened by Newly Weds Foods in Mount Pleasant, a Northeast Texas community of about 14,000, resulted from an extraordinary regional recruitment effort involving the state, local governments and private companies.
Newly Weds Foods, a Chicago-based maker of food coatings, spice blends, batters and other products for the food industry, announced its interest in a Texas plant in 2005, kicking off what would become a 10-month search. A location within easy reach of Dallas was a must, according to Charles Smith, executive director of the Mount Pleasant Industrial Foundation.
“They said they wanted to be within 150 miles of Dallas, because they do business with Tyson in Denton and other Texas meat and spice companies as well as with the seafood industry on the Gulf Coast,” Smith says. “They had 50 or 60 customers in the region that they consider critical.”
Newly Weds made repeated visits to communities in the region to discuss their transportation and utility requirements and available incentives. Meanwhile, the team preparing Mount Pleasant’s bid drew on an array of area resources.
Northeast Texas Community College in Mount Pleasant agreed to provide the new plant with work force training and support, while the Titus Regional Medical Center provided drug testing and health evaluations for prospective Newly Weds employees at reduced cost.
The state provided aid for the project as well, with a $450,000 grant from the Texas Enterprise Fund and a $1 million Texas Capital Fund grant through the Texas Department of Agriculture to support the construction of a railroad spur to the new plant.
Perhaps most gratifying was support from adjacent communities. “Each of our neighboring counties and towns supported our application with a letter saying that this is important to our region, and we need it,” Smith says. “We got those from each of the surrounding counties and their county seats. That’s an important partnership story.”
The $40 million Newly Weds Foods plant, which opened in 2007, today employs more than 100 in Mount Pleasant, making a significant contribution to the region’s economic health.
“The Texas Workforce Commission, the Northeast Texas Workforce Board, the county, the city – every entity delivered exactly what was needed when it was needed. It really fell into place,” says Smith. TR
Local Government Steps for Success: Mount Pleasant
When negotiating the rail link for the Mount Pleasant Newly Weds Foods plant, patience was a virtue, says Charles Smith, the Mount Pleasant Industrial Foundation’s executive director.
“One thing we learned, working with the railroad – you have to allow time to work with them, and avoid assuming that the timeline can be speeded up, because it can’t,” he says. “You can’t shorten that. You go through a design process that they have to approve, and from that point, it’s a year to get it built. They were up front about it, it wasn’t a surprise.”
He also cautioned against allowing Texas Enterprise Fund money to be used as a bargaining chip pitting communities against one another.
“[The company] approached the Enterprise Fund initially. We made it clear to them that the Enterprise Fund would not work until they selected a community. It would not be used to pick one Texas community over another. Basically, they said ‘we have to have a commitment,’ and my response was, ‘when you have a community, then you can make an application and get a commitment.’ So we pushed for a commitment, and they responded.”