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ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSIT Y’S NEWS SOURCE SINCE 1888 MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2016
Vol. 128 / No. 37
Mitsubishi task force remains optimistic Local and Mitsubishi officials continue to seek a buyer for the automotive plant nearly half a year after announcing its closure. Despite several potential buyers, the plant remains difficult to sell. BRENT BADER Senior Reporter
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a two-part series revisiting the Mitsubishi plant closing and its impact on the community. It has been six months since Mitsubishi Motors North America announced the closure of its local plant, and in that time, local officials and Mitsubishi officials have been working to find a buyer for the plant. “This is a long-term project and we’re still optimistic about the amount of activity we’re seeing,” Kyle Ham, chief executive officer of the Economic Development Council of Bloomington-Normal, said. In the new year alone, Ham said the plant has received four inquiries, and visitors have toured the building to assess its condition.
Why is the plant a difficult sell? While the plant continues to receive attention from anonymous manufacturers through the use of site collectors, it also continues to be a difficult final sell to the many manufacturers considering it. “It’s a 2.4 million-square-foot
facility, so the range of companies that might be interested in that sort of facility are fairly narrow because it’s huge and sits on 700 acres of ground,” Mark Peterson, City Manager of Normal, said. Additionally, the manufacturers must take into account the costs to retrofit the building to meet their specifications, as well as to move any additional material or machines from one location to the Normal plant. The size and the shape of the plant specifically met the needs of Mitsubishi, and finding a similar manufacturer is proving difficult. “This is a very unique property,” Ham said. “I would probably say there’s not too many like it in the entire country, let alone the world.” Once a buyer is secured, the facility could see an additional one or two year process to begin operating to the new manufacturer’s specifications.
Who is working on the sale? Ham and Peterson are part of a local task force that was assembled shortly after the announcement of the closure of the plant. The task force is broken into two halves, with one focused on the efforts to sell the plant and the
The Mitsubishi task force still seeks a buyer for the plant after months of searching. other centered on assisting displaced workers with finding other employment opportunities. The group joined together in order to pool resources and assure regular focus on the plant’s closure. They meet regularly over conference call once a month. “It’s a large contingence of local officials and leaders that can be a
resource to Mitsubishi as they go through this process,” Ham said.
How much longer could the sale take? The current six month window does not seem that unusual to the task force, as it has been shown that similar sales have taken two
Morgan Kuniej | Photographer
to four years, and the wait could continue for a while longer given the complexity of the sale. “Selling this type of facility is not like selling a family home that might be on the market for 90 days,” Peterson said. see MITSUBISHI page 3
Marijuana dispensary to open this spring in Normal Local officials predict low demand and minimal impact from new dispensary NATHAN PENN Political Reporter
Normal will soon be home to a medical marijuana dispensary. The Denver Colo. based marijuana retailer, The Green Solution (TGS), is expecting the dispensary on Northtown Road in Normal to open this April. Although the dispensary is the only location at which to buy medical marijuana in the sixth police district, Normal Mayor Chris Koos does not expect patronage to be high. “A lot of doctors in the BloomingtonNormal area are not anxious to prescribe medical marijuana,” Koos said. “The supply side is much stronger than the demand side.” Town of Normal City Manager Mark Peterson expects the dispensary to have a small impact on the town’s economy. “It’ll have some minimal impact on our sales tax,” Peterson said. “But we don’t expect to have any significant impact.” Twenty marijuana dispensaries are licensed to operate in Illinois, with 2,815 unique patients. A TGS spokesperson told The Pantagraph that the company expects the Normal dispensary to serve 500 patients. Peterson thinks that the low number of
Tracy Conoboy | Photographer
A marijuana dispensary will open this spring at the former Curves location, 501 Northtown Road. patients will result in a small staff at the dispensary. “Dispensaries typically employ five to 10 people,” Peterson said. “Depending on the circumstance and the size, I assume it will probably be a low of five, a maximum of 10.” Peterson said the Town of Normal did not aspire to be home to a dispensary. “The Green Solution came to us and
submitted a proposal to the state of Illinois with this site,” said Peterson. “We did not encourage any marijuana cultivator or retailer to locate in our community.” Peterson suspects that the town’s population and its central location in the sixth police district made it an attractive place for TGS to open a dispensary. The Illinois Medical Cannabis Pilot
program went into effect in 2014. As of 2015, 23 states have some form of a medical marijuana program. Koos trusts that the medical marijuana laws in Illinois are enough to prevent corrupt activity by dispensaries. “It’s one of the most stringent laws I’ve ever seen in terms of security and accountability of the product,” Koos said. “So I don’t see it as a problem.” To be eligible for a medical marijuana prescription in Illinois, a person must suffer from one of the qualifying conditions: Alzheimer’s disease, lupus, HIV/AIDS and Parkinson’s disease are among the ailments that qualify a person for medical marijuana. Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration announced Friday that Illinois will not be expanding the list of conditions that qualifies someone for medical marijuana. The decision goes against Illinois’ own Medical Cannabis Advisory Board. It recommends eight conditions be added to the list of ailments that qualifies someone for medical marijuana: autism, irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, osteoarthritis and several pain-related conditions. As of today, only about 4,000 people have been approved medical marijuana licenses.