Lenawee County gets offer for steel tubing business at Tecumseh Products building

ADRIAN — Lenawee County is receiving interest in the former Tecumseh Products Co. site in Tecumseh.

Entrepreneur and Adrian resident Nick Williams brought his idea for putting in a steel tubing business at the building on the property during the county commission’s Tuesday personnel ways and means committee meeting.

William’s history with Adrian dates back to 2003-07 when he worked summers in a steel factory in the city while attending Siena Heights University.

Williams purchased a tube mill for $10 million a year ago. He said he has a corporate guarantee from Midwest Steel Service Center for a supply of $15 million to supply steel coil. He said he also has a yearly contract with Lippert, a global steel components manufacturer, for end-use steel tube.

To take advantage of these opportunities, Williams told the board that he would need to get his equipment in the building by the end of the year. He also said that he would need to make a decision on a building within the next four to eight weeks.

Other locations he is looking at include a 150,000-square-foot facility in Livonia and a 200,000-square-foot facility in Toledo. The former Tecumseh Products building is 165,000 square feet, needs demolition work inside as well as electrical work and site preparation. This work would take two to three months to complete before setting up the equipment, Williams said.

The benefits to the county, Williams said, would be the creation of 30 to 50 jobs in the first three years. The jobs would pay a minimum wage of $25 an hour and include a full package of benefits.

Williams said the benefits to him are it is close to Adrian, where he has lived for 20 years, and he could be on site every day. The area has a strong workforce with a solid work ethic and quality work. The location is also situated among Detroit, Toledo and Chicago, which are large hubs for both steel vendors and tubing consumers.

For now, Williams just wants to purchase the building on the site. The county has not received its appraisal for the site yet. The company it hired to do the appraisal was supposed to deliver it in May. The company later came back to the county and said it did not have the ability to do the appraisal due to all the environmental concerns at the site, county administrator Kim Murphy said.

Williams said he plans on a phase two which would include a building addition, the addition of overhead cranes and a slitter machine, allowing for all product to be processed in house. This would create an additional 25 to 40 jobs in two to three years.

In phase three, there would be a large addition of up to 500,000 square feet with more cranes and slitters as well as a fully automated tube mill. Williams said this would allow him to compete in the Big 3 auto market and would lead to the creation of 50 to 100 more jobs in three to five years.

Williams approached Commission Chair Jim Van Doren, R-Tipton; commissioner Dustin Krasny, R-Cambridge Twp., and commissioner Kevon Martis, R-Riga Twp., as well as Tecumseh City Manager Dan Swallow a couple of months before the meeting. Commissioner David Stimpson, R-Tecumseh, had not been approached by the entrepreneur nor had any of the other commissioners.

Van Doren asked if the commission should move forward and pass a resolution indicating that the county would like to proceed with negotiations with Williams. Stimpson said that would be an issue for a closed session and that he had not received enough information to support any action on the proposal.

Van Doren said that Williams would need access to environmental details at the property. Corporate counsel John Gillooly advised the commission that Williams could make an offer for the property at any time and negotiations would proceed from there, noting that it would be very difficult to get a deal like this done in four to eight weeks.

Murphy received Williams’ contact information and will follow up with him on environmental concerns.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Lenawee County gets offer for steel tubing business at Products site