27/06/05 ‘Good prospects’ for local growth (By TIM RAUSCH)

LIMA — There are good prospects for more jobs coming to the Lima area, said the head of Allen Economic Development Group. The latest being a pallet maker planning to move into a Fort Shawnee building with 50 or more jobs.
Group President Marcel Wagner did not name the company intending to go into the 48,000-square-foot building at 3180 Fort Shawnee Industrial Drive. The move depends on the com-pany receiving an incentive package, he said.
The pallet-making company is already a supplier of pallets for Procter & Gamble Co., but has been shipping them from out of the area, Wagner said. “So they’ll be coming in locally to sup-ply those products.”
Some details of the company’s investment aren’t known, Wagner said, because the company hasn’t completed applications.
Company officials told Wagner they hope to be operating in Fort Shawnee by September.
“ I think we may have all of our spec buildings gone by the end of the year,” Wagner told Lima/Allen County Chamber of Commerce members Friday morning.
Wagner said there are “good prospects” inquiring about the available building in Central Point Parkway.
It is another sign of local growth. Engineered Plastic Products this week began getting abatement approval for a 50-job, $3.5 million expansion project. Procter & Gamble is pursuing zoning approval for a $100 million warehouse project that would create 200 to 300 jobs, though not all of them may be new for the area. Once an ethanol plant is built, that would offer an-other 35 jobs.
Wagner said another potential business, a processor of chickens, is considering its financial options and may move into available industrial space or build its own plant.
Other job-creating projects remain in the realm of possibilities.
Premcor Lima Refinery Manager Tim Murphy said the company and Canadian firm EnCana are still in the midst of their feasibility study, intending to have it done by the end of July or the beginning of August. There would be 40 to 80 permanent jobs created at the plant if the $1 billion expansion to handle sour crude oil is undertaken.