By Carrie Moritz, Gazette
At the City Council meeting held Monday, the council again faced the re-zoning request from Nachurs Alpine Solutions LLC, a company that makes fertilizer products and exports to the surrounding area. Despite vocal protests from neighborhood residents, the council voted 4-2 in favor of rezoning the area from residential to industrial.
The mayor was absent, meaning that if the vote had come to a tie, the motion would have died for lack of a tie-breaker.
The initial request for re-zoning had come at March's meeting, but as no one from Nachurs Alpine was in attendance with the proposal, it was delayed. The first formal request was heard in May, when Nachurs Alpine manager John Carson outlined to the council the intent behind the re-zoning. He spoke about plans to build an 85-foot by 200-foot warehouse and manufacturing facility on that land.
The approximately $1.2 million-dollar facility would manufacture micronutrients for fertilizers, something that is currently brought in by trucks and added to their product. Essentially, Carson said, they're putting heavy metals into a solution that will keep heavy metals in the solution.
"What we're making, you can get in a Miracle Gro bottle and put in your garden," he pointed out. "It's the same exact thing."
Carson stated at the May meeting that he foresees the manufacturing on-site to be a boon to the area. It will also produce 3-4 more jobs on top of the revenue the City would stand to make from building permits and taxes.
Resident Tyler Ramsbey, who first acknowledged the difficult decision that had to be made by the councilors, stated last month that he was keeping an open mind on the subject while he asked questions and researched. He said that as someone whose backyard abuts the property, he had thought long and hard, had respectful conversations with Carson and Mayor Greg Beaner, and had decided that having industrial facilities right behind his property was not something he wanted.
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