FROM albertleatribune.com: Alamco Wood Products intends to make an $850,000 expansion this summer that will result in the addition of local jobs this fall.

General Manager John Forman said Alamco purchased equipment in Oregon for gluing and laminating wood products — adding to its existing glue-lam assets — and will move it to a building on its property in July.

The addition of about 12 jobs, he said, should happen in September. He said there is a possibility of more jobs added down the road.

“We are anticipating the market will come back toward the end of this year and grow into next year, especially for the power pole industry,” Forman said. “We want to be poised to take advantage of market growth.”

He said several wood-laminating companies closed during the recession. Having fewer competitors will mean growth for Alamco.

Forman said state and local tax breaks from the Job Opportunity Building Zones program — an incentive program aimed to bolster the economy in Greater Minnesota — made the local expansion possible.

He said Alamco considered buying a facility in Wisconsin or keeping the equipment in Oregon and operating there.

“JOBZ made it worth operating the equipment in Albert Lea,” Forman said.

The building is on a five-acre parcel of the Alamco campus at 1410 W. Ninth St. on the southwest side of Albert Lea that formerly was the home of a Japanese company interested in building houses. It had acquired JOBZ status but hit the market wrong and closed shop.

By setting up the glue-lam line in that building, the JOBZ-designated site will have a new tenant, allowing the reactivation of the JOBZ incentives.

JOBZ started in 2003 and runs out in 2015. Forman said he hopes state legislators pass a measure to either extend JOBZ or find a replacement.

“You need some reason to leave your jobs here,” he said.

The program’s role in Alamco’s decision to expand in Albert Lea “really emphasizes the fact that we need a replacement for JOBZ,” said Albert Lea Economic Development Agency Executive Director Dan Dorman.

He said opponents of Gov. Tim Pawlenty often kick JOBZ for political show, but Dorman said if they would separate politics for the sake of good policy Minnesota needs a program for its outstate economy or for disadvantaged areas.

Dorman noted Pawlenty didn’t dream up JOBZ and said it is modeled after similar programs in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

According to the Albert Lea Economic Development Agency, more than 650 jobs have been created in Albert Lea using JOBZ.

Alamco Wood Products is owned by New Brighton-based Bell Lumber & Pole. The first wood-laminating plant was built in Albert Lea in 1939 by the Rock Island Lumber Co., or RILCO. It built at the present Ninth Street site in 1954. RILCO became a division of Weyerhaeuser in 1960.

Weyerhaeuser in the early 1980s began to divest its wood-processing operations. In 1982, it closed the plant. Ten former salaried Weyerhauser employees purchased and reopened the plant later that year.

Bell purchased Alamco Wood Products in May 2009. The two companies already had a working relationship prior to the sale.