E.A. Sween is ready to move in; Greenwood County hands over keys
Greenwood County’s newest corporate neighbor is ready to move in.
County officials handed over the keys Wednesday morning for the North Greenwood Industrial Park spec building to the E.A. Sween Co. The Minnesota-based manufacturer of prepackaged sandwiches will be spending $37.9 million to fill the shell building with its newest manufacturing facility, and hiring about 300 people over the next three years.
And it wouldn’t have happened without the county’s gamble, putting a speculative building at 5730 Highway 25 N., Hodges.
“Economic development is a long-play, and this park has been eight years in the making,” county Economic Development Director James Bateman said. “If we can get a company here, we can sell them on Greenwood — but we have to have the product available. We have to have a building for them to come see.”
County Councilman Theo Lane was an early advocate for the spec building when he ran for office in 2016, pushing for the building while also serving as advocacy chairman for that year’s Capital Project Sales Tax campaign.
“People thought I was crazy, but here I am standing here today,” Lane said. “People said I couldn’t get elected supporting a tax.”
But $4 million of those CPST funds went into constructing the North Greenwood Industrial Park, and the first building there was finished in November 2020. Once the county had the 100,000-square-foot speculative building, they had to find a company to fill it.
E.A. Sween was that perfect, blue-chip tenant, Bateman said. When company officials came to tour the building, President and CEO Tom Sween paid a follow-up visit two weeks later; Bateman said that was a good sign.
Earl August Sween founded E.A. Sween in 1955 as a sandwich company franchise in Minnesota, but cut ties with it’s franchisee in 1980. Today it makes the Deli Express brand of prepackaged sandwiches sold in convenience stores.
The Greenwood facility is expected to produce about 75 million sandwiches a year once at full capacity, doubling the company’s production. Tom Sween said this third-generation, family-owned business is ready to consider Greenwood a second home.
“We plan to keep this tradition alive and well, supporting Greenwood county,” he said, standing in front of the spec building’s doors. “This will be remembered as one of the biggest days of our company’s history.”
Alongside constructing the shell building for the company, Greenwood offered incentives including a 30-year agreement to lock the property’s millage at 6% of its assessed value and special source revenue tax credits for a decade.
“Greenwood County is a shining example of doing what it takes to attract and recruit a business,” County Council Chairman Chuck Moates said.
The money the county receives from selling the building to E.A. Sween will get rolled into building a spec building for the next prospective tenant. Bateman said the plan is to continue expanding the park, attracting further industry to the Highway 25 North corridor.
Originally Published by Index-Journal on:Sep 14, 2022
By DAMIAN DOMINGUEZ ddominguez@indexjournal.com