If we can’t make cool stuff in South Dakota, we can at least paint it:
Polaris Industries, manufacturer of Indian and Victory motorcycles, will turn the old Lehman Trikes Spearfish plant into a paint facility.
In a release Monday, Polaris stated the company will hire about 80 people who will work in a two-shift operation at the Spearfish site, which should be up and running by the end of the year.
The 51,000-square-foot will provide additional liquid paint capacity for Indian and Victory motorcycles made in Spirit Lake, Iowa [“Polaris Will Paint Indian, Victory Bikes in Spearfish,” KOTA-TV, 2015.10.19].
Spearfish appears to be coming out ahead: Champion Investments had promised Spearfish up to 50 jobs at the Lehman facility in 2012; the company cut a dozen jobs when it closed the trike plant last spring. Now Polaris gets a shot at seeing whether it can make its business model work amidst the isolation that Champion said sunk its Spearfish Lehman operation.
Spearfish is also getting 100 new jobs from the reopening of TMone (rhymes with T-Bone?) in November. And in the healthiest economic news for the northern gateway to the Black Hills, my friend Rachel Headley just helped Spearfish land a $100K grant from the USDA to create a local food hub to help connect local food producers with nursing homes, schools, and other cafeteria-scale buyers. Hmm… maybe the food hub can help Polaris and TMone supply some rhubarb pie at the company cafeterias. After a hard shift of paint fumes or call-center angst, some rhubarb pie could surely revive the soul.
I notice that when Cory talks about Dakota’s neighbors,iowa is almost never mentioned. What say you now that you are getting some business of the good kind from here? Spirit Lake is about 40 miles from me. I’ll bet lots of Dakota anglers use Berkley fishing products as well. Go iowa. :)
Iowa? Where’s that? Isn’t that a suburb of Dakota Dunes? :-)
It is interesting that it makes business sense to build motorcycles in Spirit Lake, then ship them all the way to Spearfish just to be painted. 483 miles is awfully long for an assembly line. I don’t mind the business, but why not build and paint in the same place?
iowa is the Minnesota Riviera or as I like to say-the beautiful South of Minnesota. That is also a geographical fact.
http://cyrilhuzeblog.com/2015/10/20/polaris-starting-paint-facility-in-spearfish-south-dakota-to-provide-additional-capacity-to-indian-and-victory-spirit-lake-factory/comment-page-1/
Weren’t you ever warned about looking a gift horse in the mouth?
Polaris was having quality issues with their new paint facility in Spirit Lake. They were already outsourcing much of the paint work so why not paint the fenders, tanks, fairings, etc in house? Spearfish is only 500 miles away with almost all of the miles on I90. Polaris was also having trouble finding enough workers in NW Iowa.
One has to wonder if the Spearfish facility is just going to be a stopgap facility until Polaris gets the Spirit Lake paint facility fixed and running more efficiently. Did they buy the building and the equipment in Spearfish or are they just leasing?
http://www.radioiowa.com/2014/02/21/motorcycle-production-in-spirit-lake-cant-keep-up-with-demand/
http://uk.advfn.com/news/DJN/2015/article/67827670
http://motorbikewriter.com/indian-and-victory-update-paint-works/
According to Cyrilhuzeblog they bought the Spearfish facility and the equipment that goes with it.