By the numbers:
$787,000: purchase price
25: Number of jobs Konecranes pledged to create
100: Number of jobs Konecranes has added
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Clark County commissioners approved the sale of its former agricultural building to Konecranes Region America on Wednesday, a deal that has led to new jobs but also divided the board.
The purchase price is $787,000 for the building that’s now home to the Springfield-based commercial crane maker’s global training center.
Konecranes had leased the site for about two years as part of an expansion with plans to add 25 jobs. Commissioners then approved a lease-purchase agreement with the business last year.
So far the manufacturer has added at least 100 jobs.
“The company has significantly exceeded the original projections,” said Todd Blair, a spokesman for Konecranes. “We’re a growing company so the additional space is welcomed to us.”
The 2-1 decision to approve the deal came during a contentious meeting in which Clark County Commissioner David Hartley again called the deal illegal because the sale wasn’t open for public bid.
“I have a problem with the actions of the commission concerning this sale. I believe their actions to be unethical and corrupt. The process being using to bring about this sale is a thinly veiled subversion of Ohio law,” Hartley said.
The county auditor’s appraised the property at about $1 million and a commercial appraisal valued it at $900,000, Hartley said, and the deal was engineered by officials with the chamber of commerce.
“The obvious conflict of interest should alone be enough to void this sale,” Hartley said.
Clark County Commissioner John Detrick immediately shot back at Hartley.
“I challenge Commissioner Hartley to tell us what jobs in his 11 years has he brought to Clark County? I haven’t seen anything except negativity on his part and I think it’s a shame that he has such a narrow and red herring point of view on this,” Detrick said.
Detrick disputed that the deal is illegal, saying that Prosecutor Andy Wilson has reviewed it. The deal didn’t break any laws, Wilson said in November.
“There is no statute explicitly requiring bidding for lease-purchase agreements like the one executed between Clark County and Konecranes. The statute addressing lease-purchase agreements is silent on the issue of bidding,” he said.
Commissioner Rick Lohnes voted in favor of the sale Wednesday after hearing comments from County Administrator Nathan Kennedy about the process that led to the agreement.
Concerns were raised about the lease-purchase agreement in July, Kennedy said, but he and the prosecutor’s office created a deal that they believe is defendable.
“The problem is, commissioners, we’ve gone down that road now. The more appropriate and best time if we weren’t going to do it this way would have been in July. The cleanest would have been to bid it out. For whatever reason we decided not to do it that way so we tried to make the best, defendable (agreement) that we could,” Kennedy said.
Horton Hobbs, vice president of economic development for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce, couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
Konecranes has done more than they promised, he said last year.
“They have made a positive contribution to the overall growth of jobs in this community,” Hobbs previously said.
Officials had projected that the company would bolster the local economy by $8 million with its original expansion plans.
“It’s exceeded that,” Detrick said.
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