Tipton: First to be shovel-ready

Part of a monthly series on economic issues in small towns.

TIPTON — When Jeremy Rogers and his brother, Scott, were seeking to expand their plastic recycling business, the Tipton Economic Development Corp. presented an attractive option.

'Of all the communities that we visited, TEDCO offered us the best deal,' said Jeremy Rogers, co-owner and vice president of operations at Cedar Poly. 'The location was important for getting materials in and out, and it also was in proximity to where we were living.'

Many of the businesses in Tipton are locally owned and employ fewer than 50 people. Mark Nolte, president of Iowa City Area Development Group, said the Cedar County seat was the first community in Iowa to offer shovel-ready sites in an industrial park.

'TEDCO bought land and invested money to provide shovel-ready sites before the state had its program,' Nolte said. 'We're looking at working with TEDCO to get a speculative building constructed because we think that's the kind of growth they're going to get.

'If someone builds a building, some of the local companies will fill it. There are a couple of local employers who are pinched for space and need to expand.'

Cedar Poly, which bought land from TEDCO in 2007 and constructed a 62,000-square-foot office and warehouse, employs 48 people. Last year, the company built a 60,000-square-foot processing center, adding equipment and expanding production from 40,000 pounds per day of recycled plastic to 80,000 pounds.

Most of the plastic containers and polypropylene film recycled at Cedar Poly come from within a 300- to 400-mile radius. The material is cleaned and palletized for shipment to China and domestic manufacturing destinations.

Some of the plastic is reprocessed as resin pellets, and some material is ground into flakes for further processing.

'We handle about 30 different types of plastic,' Scott Rogers said. 'We take plastic film rolls, television housings, bales of used plastic toys from Goodwill Industries in Minneapolis and plastic grocery bags from every Wal-Mart in Iowa.

'We turn the grocery bags into polyethylene pellets, which are used to make everything from ag to automotive.'

Cedar Poly, which operates around the clock, has annual sales of about $18 million. It draws its work force primarily from Tipton and surrounding Cedar County communities, but initially attracted workers from the Quad Cities, 30 miles to the east on Interstate 80.

Tipton's location about five miles north of Interstate 80 also has benefitted TSF Structures Inc., which supplies structural steel, joists, deck and related projects for the commercial, industrial and institutional construction industry in Iowa and the surrounding states.

Jeff Schebler, president of TSF Structures, started as a manager with David Bear Inc. in May 1981. Schebler bought the Cedar Rapids office of David Bear in November 2001.

In 1996, Schebler partnered with Gary Helmold to form Tipton Structural Fabrication in Tipton. (It later became known as TSF Structures.)

'We bought an old building north of town from an excavating company in Iowa City and rebuilt it,' Schebler said. 'We put another building up three or four years later. Our major heavy fabrication is done in Tipton, and we have a small-parts fabrication plant in Cedar Rapids.

'In 2011, I bought Century Custom Painting and Sandblasting in Tipton.'

TSF Structures employs about 48 people, including around 12 employees at the Tipton fabrication plant. The company, which ships 8 million pounds of steel each year, sells to about nine states and has shipped product as far away as Washington, D.C., and Georgia.

While other structural steel fabricators prefer to handle the larger components of a building, TSF Structures also makes smaller parts such as stairs and handrails.

In the Corridor, the company supplied structural steel components for the addition to the U.S. Cellular Center, the skywalk over First Avenue between the DoubleTree Hotel and the new parking garage, the Hotel at Kirkwood Center, New Covenant Bible Church in Robins, the University of Iowa Children's Hospital, supports for signs at Kinnick Stadium, the new Louise Petersen Residence Hall at the UI, and other construction projects.

'We will be working on skywalks for Principal Financial in Des Moines, and we've done about 125 stores for Hy-Vee over the years,' Schebler said. 'Out of about 60 general contractors, we have about 35 that we work with consistently.'

Tipton's largest private employer is CDS Global mailing services centers in Tipton, which also has a facility in Wilton. Seventy-eight percent of its 165 employees live in Cedar County and 51 percent live in Tipton, said Mary Kies, general manager.

'We don't require a lot from the community,' she added. 'We pretty much contribute to the community rather than take resources away.

'We have a good, solid core staff and we are pretty right-sized at this moment. We monitor our volumes to make sure that we stay where we have to be.

'If there's a challenge, it would be recruiting additional workers. The market is very competitive right now.'

Nolte, president of ICAD Group, said scarcity of rental housing is a challenge facing Tipton.

'When we do our existing industry surveys, we hear companies saying they're struggling to get people to live in Tipton,' he said. 'They need to find a developer willing to come in and build some 12-plexes and multifamily units.'

Tipton by the numbers

 

2010 Census figures

2000 census figures

Total population

3,221 

3,155

Males

1,555 

1,524

Females

1,666 

1,631

Median age

42.3 

39.7

Under 18

779

745

 

2010 Census figures

2000 census figures

Whites

3,154

3,111

Black or African American

9

11

Native American or Alaska Native

7

1

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander

2

Asian

10

10

Other race

6

2

Hispanic or Latino

46

34

 

2010 Census figures

2000 census figures

Total households

1,394

1,334

Family households

842

869

Average family size

2.90

2.87

Owner-occupied housing units

990

970

Renter-occupied housing units

404

364