Airway Heights steel projects a go
Two companies get bank loans after state funding is pulled
More than half a million dollars in state funding was scrapped for two new steel operations on the West Plains after the city of Airway Heights was told its local funding match was inadequate.
Albert Tripp, the city’s administrator, said the companies receiving the funding – Brown-Strauss Steel and Seaport Steel – already have secured funding through private lenders and still will locate facilities near the Geiger Spur, a rail line constructed through the West Plains by Spokane County.
“They were able to find funding privately through a bank with better rates and a more competitive package,” Tripp said.
The companies won state funding last fall, when Washington’s Community and Economic Revitalization Board awarded Airway Heights a $363,000 loan and $175,000 grant for two separate projects, the largest share of the $1.4 million awarded by the board last year. The city was to match the funds with $187,000, and wanted to use money already spent by the county as its match.
According to the state, the companies said they would invest more than $5 million in the project, helping to create 20 permanent jobs.
According to Tripp, Brown-Strauss, based in Denver, sought to build a half-mile-long rail spur connecting its facility to the Geiger Spur. The company builds wide-flange beam and structural steel tubing. It will occupy a building vacated by Spokane’s SCAFCO Corp.
Seaport Steel, from Seattle, would have used the funding to reconstruct a public roadway, as well as provide a rail crossing for the road, where it is building a 60,000-square-foot building.
Janea Eddy, the revitalization board’s program coordinator, said the state funding was pulled, in part, because Airway Heights sought to use money Spokane County had spent in recent years on improvements to the Geiger Spur development as its local match.
“Our match for the public project has to be cash,” Eddy said. Her organization is administered by the state’s commerce department with the goal of creating private-sector jobs by helping to finance infrastructure projects.
Tripp, with the city, said Brown-Strauss opted not to use the state money after it secured private funding. Also, he said the city was not aware the local match had to be cash until late in the process.
Acting County Engineer Chad Coles confirmed he’d sent Tripp a list of costs associated with the county’s Geiger Spur project. County Commissioner Al French, who represents the West Plains, said he supports the projects moving forward, with or without state money.
“All of it is positive, from my standpoint,” he said.
The projects are better served in the end, Tripp said, noting that Brown-Strauss was unhappy with requirements placed on the project by accepting state funding.
“They wanted that spur to be private rather than public,” he said, adding that if the spur had been built with state funding “it’s got to be public for the life of the loan.”
The loss of state funds hasn’t jeopardized the projects, Tripp said.
“They’re building. They’re under construction,” he said. “In both cases, they’re able to move forward.”