Manufacturer to bring 65 new jobs to Quincy

September 26, 2008

Jamie Busen

Quincy city officials confirmed Thursday that a new manufacturing facility will be built at 311 Radio Road within the next year, creating 65 jobs in Quincy.

Fitzpatrick Bros. Inc., a cleansing solutions manufacturer, bought a little more than eight acres of land from J.M. Huber Corporation for $161,920 on Sept. 16. The company, which is headquartered in Chicago, uses calcium carbonate in its products, something J.M. Huber manufactures.

Officials from Fitzpatrick Bros. declined to comment, as did officials from J.M. Huber.

Waterkotte Construction is clearing the land, directly west of the J.M. Huber plant, for the facility. No information about the size of the facility to be built was available.

“We are very excited about this great addition to our industrial base,” said Mayor John Spring, noting that he believes one of the reasons Quincy was chosen was the quality of the workforce here.

Jim Mentesti, president of the Great River Economic Development Foundation, said J.M. Huber officials came to GREDF nearly a decade ago and said that because of the product it sells, it would make sense to recruit a customer to build in Quincy.

“They brought somebody in five or six years ago, and it never happened. They brought somebody in three years ago, and we had pretty decent talks with them, and it never happened,” Mentesti said. “Four months ago, they brought these people in, and it has happened. “What that does is it kind of validates that somebody like J.M. Huber obviously believes in our area.”

The reasons for Fitzpatrick Bros. to build here include nearly $10 million in infrastructure improvements that have been made in the area, such as the widening and upgrade of Radio Road; signalization and turn lanes at Radio Road and Ill. 57; a water line extension south of Radio Road and South Sixth; a railroad extension and road upgrades.

Those improvements are the same ones that attracted Prince Agri Products to announce earlier this month that it would build manufacturing, warehouse and laboratory facilities in the South Quincy Development District, creating 41 jobs.

The Fitzpatrick Bros. facility will be in the enterprise zone, enabling the company to receive tax abatements for 10 years, to pay no sales tax on building materials and to pay 50 percent of the cost of building permits.

Fitzpatrick Bros. also will partake in the Economic Development for a Growing Economy (EDGE) tax credit program.

According to the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, EDGE is a tax incentive to encourage companies to locate or expand operations in Illinois when there is active consideration of a competing location in another state. The tax credits are equal to the amount of state income taxes withheld from the salaries of employees in the created jobs.