Menu
Peerless leadership meets Nevada city council
During Tuesday evening’s regular meeting of Nevada’s city council it became official; pending passage of an ordinance consenting to the assignment and transfer of the city’s taxable industrial revenue bonds, issued in a principal amount not to exceed $960,000, from Mareth Enterprises to Peerless Products, the old American Standard building would be purchased by Peerless Products. The ordinance passed first reading and now awaits passage of a second reading during the next session of the city council for the sale to proceed.
Lexi Norris, the attorney representing Peerless Products for the transaction, introduced herself and Peerless CEO Bill Osbern who then introduced several members of the Peerless leadership. Those attending were President and Co-Owner Coby Jones, Plant Manager Andrew Kimmel and Continuous Improvement Manager Jerimiah Richards.
Osbern discussed the company and its relationship with the community of Fort Scott. “I want to say we are not moving out of Fort Scott. We have been in Fort Scott for 60 years. We have a very good relationship with the city and they are very supportive of us.” He continued to say Peerless is the largest employer in Fort Scott and they are totally committed to the community.
“We’ve kind of had our eye on it (the building) for some time. It’s a large building, it’s got a lot of land connected to it so we could grow in the future and expand,” Osbern said. “It’s also close to us – our manager and president live five minutes away from it. We also have a lot of employees who live in Nevada and the surrounding area.” The company believes that going forward and growing in the future the Nevada location will allow them to expand “our geographic space where we can draw from a little further away to grow in the future.”
Company President and Co-Owner Coby Jones then explained that Peerless is a national supplier of architectural windows and doors. “We do work all over the country – from the west coast to the east coast – even in Canada.” The company provides product to high-rise buildings, universities, schools, hotels, hospitals and even military bases. Peerless employs some 420 people and are very active in the community.
“What we plan to do with the building over here is initially make it a staging warehouse,” Jones said. “We will bring in raw materials to Nevada, then on a closed loop we’ll have trucks going between Fort Scott and Nevada. They will take the raw materials to the plant in Fort Scott and bring the finished goods back to Nevada. We will stage those jobs around the country here and will ship the product out from there.”
“We are also trying to create more value for our clients,” he continued. “Right now we are manufacturing the product and they have to do a lot of the erection at the site. We think we can bring on some new capabilities to preassemble and do all the pre-installation work” for an entire module.
In a separate interview, City Manager JD Kehrman explained that if the second reading is completed successfully, it will allow Peerless Products to purchase the property from the current owner, Mareth Enterprises.
The city had previously met with several prospective buyers of the American Standard building and soon realized there was a gap between what it was going to take to buy the building and what it was going to take to keep the building viable. “It just needed so much work and we felt that the gap was about a half million dollars.”
That was when they were able to strike a deal with Mareth Enterprises. If Mareth would put up the funds, which amounted to $30,000 to $40,000, to pay for the agreement the city could work on the Chapter 100 mechanism that allows the city to abate the property taxes. “That’s how we came up with the money to make the property valuable to someone.”
By the end of 2017, Mareth closed on the property and began improvements. They cleared land and started repairs on the building. “There was no risk on the city or the taxpayers,” Kehrman said. “The reassignment was anticipated because we knew this sale was going to come eventually.”
He says the deal is a win-win situation for both Nevada and Fort Scott. “We already share a workforce, but they also needed the opportunity to expand for new product lines.” He says their purchase of the building will meet the needs of Peerless Products well by providing needed warehousing space and the ability to expand into some light manufacturing in the future.
The city benefits because a building that is very large and needed a lot of work will not be left to deteriorate. “We needed private investment to keep it viable. The creation of jobs and the eventual expansion of our job base here is also a big plus.”