After Amazon built its massive 2.3 million-square-foot Robotics Fulfillment Center in Davenport, it paused on opening it due to various economic factors. This delay gave many, including us, concern that the high-tech facility would never open.
Thankfully, it did open and now it employees more than 1,500 people with the hopes of hiring another 1,000.
Now Fair Oaks, another economic development coup for the Quad Cities, is back on track after pausing on the construction of a 150,000-square-foot, fully-cooked bacon production plant in Davenport due to supply chain and economic issues.
A Sept. 1, 2022, groundbreaking was held at the 32-acre site in the Eastern Iowa Industrial Center (EIIC) off Interstate 80. But work was suspended in 2023.
While the pandemic’s lingering impact may have played a part in that pause, Fair Oaks CEO Mike Thompson told the QCBJ, “We also had just a huge amount of supply chain issues, including equipment lead times which back then were almost double. Some were even triple on particular pieces of equipment — important pieces of equipment that we would have needed to run the facility.”
Even basic building blocks such as steel and concrete had “huge delays and it was just, call it, the perfect storm,” he said.
At that time, too, the CEO said, “the economic environment of the country was changing and no one knew what direction it was going to head so all of that just led to what I would call a logical, reasonable pause to just make sure things still work the way they were supposed to work and all the economic factors were taken into consideration.”
Fair Oaks, the 11th largest Black-owned business in the U.S., headquartered in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, is now back working hard to construct the $134 million food manufacturing plant with a team led by the Austin Company and also includes Davenport-based Russell. The plant is estimated to create 247 jobs.
What these pauses or delays underscore is that economic development projects never get done without a myriad of supply chain, employment and other factors going in the right direction. Investing millions of dollars in capital projects can become a gamble when the economy shifts.
Being able to pause or adjust to market forces is smart business. We are glad that Fair Oaks is back on track just like Amazon.
We are hopeful that Fair Oaks will be able to run a profitable and competitive food manufacturing facility in the Quad Cities for years to come.