Contract awarded for turn lanes at Mercer Landmark

CELINA - Brumbaugh Construction of Arcanum was awarded a $522,216 contract to add turn lanes on State Route 118 to accommodate Mercer Landmark's $27 million expansion in St. Henry.

The project involves the widening of State Route 118 to include a new southbound left turn and a new northbound right turn lane into the proposed Mercer Landmark site and onto Carthagena Road.

Brumbaugh's bid was the lowest of three submitted. Also bidding were Tom's Construction, St. Henry, $530,199; and Shinn Brothers Inc., Celina, $550,000.

County community development director Jared Ebbing said preliminary dirt work likely will begin in late winter with paving to start in early spring before finishing up by July.

Earlier this year, commissioners accepted a $335,000 Ohio Development Services Agency 629 Roadwork Grant to install turn lanes near the new facility "so that if trucks are turning in, there's widened pavement where cars can go around and trucks can turn in without any issues," Ebbing had said.

The state grant requires the county to provide about $120,000 in matching funds, Ebbing noted. The local share will be paid through the conveyance account. The county receives a real estate conveyance fee of $1 per $1,000 of property sold to support its community development office and strengthen the local workforce.

Mercer Landmark also will contribute toward the work, Ebbing said.

MPS Feed LLC, a partnership between Mercer Landmark Inc. and Prairie Star Farms, is building the facility at the intersection of Carthagena Road and State Route 118 after having evaluated the benefits of a new feed mill over the past year.

According to Ebbing, all the dirt and preparation work is completed, and the structure is starting to slowly go up.

"With the new Food Safety and Modernization Act ... animal feed has become more under the regulations of food production," Ebbing had told commissioners. "Therefore, with the changes, they have to modernize some of their facilities."

The new facility will be quite large, Ebbing has said, noting it will process 140 tons of grain an hour, compared with the Celina branch, which processes 65 tons an hour. It would add 43 jobs, increasing its total employment in the St. Henry area to 59. Ebbing confirmed that some of the new jobs would be ancillary, such as truck-driving positions.

Mercer Landmark is a locally owned cooperative serving west-central Ohio and east-central Indiana. It has 19 facilities located in Mercer, Darke, Van Wert, Paulding and Defiance counties in Ohio. Prairie Star Farms is based in North Star and produces shell eggs for its food service and retail customers throughout North America. Its egg production comes from farms located in west-central Ohio and east-central Indiana.

In 2017, Prairie Star Farms supplied more than 200 million dozen caged and cage-free eggs, placing Prairie Star Farms among the top 10 in U.S. shell egg production.