Green-energy plant is started in Monroe

Article published March 31, 2010

Green-energy plant is started in Monroe

Firm to make wind turbine towers, plans to hire 150

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, center, speaks with Gregory Adanin, left, president and CEO of Ventower Industries, and James Viciana, right, board chairman, at the ceremonies. Brandon Hofmeister, special counsel for energy and climate policy for Michigan, is second from left.

By JON CHAVEZ

BLADE BUSINESS WRITER

MONROE - A weed-covered field at the Port of Monroe bore promise yesterday for a $22 million project to build a factory that will make industrial-sized wind generator towers.

Ventower Industries LLC, a privately owned start-up company, said it will hire 150 employees initially and could have 225 later if sales take off. A ceremonial groundbreaking occurred yesterday at the 38-acre brownfield site, attended by 150 federal, state, county, and city officials, and others.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said the project could be “the foundation for a new economy” in the state.

“We want Ventower to be the example of how green jobs will work here,” she said.

The governor said the state, which is staggering under 14.1 percent unemployment, has a new strategy to reinvigorate its economy: “To move Michigan from the rust belt to the green belt.”

The debate on climate change eventually will lead to new green-industry jobs. Michigan has to be ready to create those jobs and companies like Ventower will show the way, the governor said.

Ventower expects to finish its new plant, on the site of a former waste landfill, by year’s end and start production immediately, delivering its first products by mid-2011. The plant could build annually up to 250 of the 240-foot-tall plate-steel towers, which it plans to ship by truck, rail, or on barges on the Great Lakes.

A model wind tower was on display at the groundbreaking.

( THE BLADE/DAVE ZAPOTOSKY )

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The company is not yet accepting applications and won’t have a method for receiving them for another two to three weeks, officials said.

James Viciana, Ventower’s chairman, said the company has orders for its products and has a competitive advantage in that there are no other wind-tower manufacturers in the Great Lakes region. Most of the towers now used come from Asia, he added. “I think we can build a better product than those which the industry uses,” he said.

The project, which has room for a 76,000-square-foot second phase, will be funded largely by

private investors, Mr. Viciana said. But it is getting help from government sources.

The company has received a federal advanced energy tax credit worth $2.5 million to help buy plant machinery. It is getting a $3.7 million employment credit over 10 years from the Michigan Economic Development Corp., and a brownfield redevelopment credit of up to $5.8 million.

Also, the city of Monroe is providing abatement and infrastructure upgrades at the Port of Monroe.

Ventower, which was formerly known as Great Lakes Towers LLC, has been trying to get started for a few years now. It had looked at other locales but settled on Monroe primarily because of incentives it got from Monroe and the state.

But Mr. Viciana said other key factors were an available skilled work force and the proximity to Lake Erie, on which the company plans to transport materials and parts. “This became our preferred site,” he added.