Over the next five years
F.C. Mason Co. will hire 40 new employees and open a new manufacturing facility at the former Federal-Mogul plant site in St. Johns, officials said this morning.
Brian Coughlin, president and CEO of the Clinton County Economic Alliance, said F.C. Mason, which manufactures tillage equipment, bought the 10.8 acre site on Mead Street on June 1 after receiving approval for a $1 million brownfield grant to clean up contamination at the location.
The grant was awarded by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. City and state officials were scheduled to formally announce the project Tuesday afternoon in Lansing.
The Federal-Mogul plant was shuttered in 2008, when the last of 600 employees at the plant site lost their jobs. At the time, the Southfield based company, which manufactures automotive bearings, was in bankruptcy protection.
“(F.C. Mason) is a fast-growing company, and St. Johns is glad to see that property being used again,” Coughlin said.
The Federal-Mogul site is located in St. Johns Industrial Park, about a block away from the F.C. Mason plant site on Steel Street. F.C. Mason will continue to operate that site, but will absorb its second site on Railroad Street into the new site.
Coughlin said F.C. Mason will outfit the former Federal-Mogul building, which is 265,000 square feet, to begin manufacturing tillage parts sometime this summer. In coming weeks, the company is expected to begin cleanup of the property.
F.C. Mason currently has 62 employees and it expects to add the 40 additional employees over the next five years, Coughlin said.
He said that state Sen. Judy Emmons, a Sheridan Republican, was instrumental in the negotiations between F.C. Mason, Federal-Mogul and the state Department of Environmental Quality.
