Red Diamond president Bill Bowron, center, and other officials break ground on a new food-service distribution center at the corporate campus in Moody.
By Will Heath- The St. Clair Times- March 31, 2011
Red Diamond is bringing the remainder of its corporate operation to St. Clair County.
On Tuesday, company President Bill Bowron spoke in advance of a groundbreaking ceremony, held Wednesday at the company’s corporate headquarters off Park Avenue (near the Brompton crossroads). Bowron said the new building will house the company’s food-service distribution center, currently located on Vanderbilt Road in Birmingham.
The distribution center will join a two-story corporate office building and the coffee and tea manufacturing center on the Moody campus.
“His entire operation will be in the city of Moody, and it will bring 40-60 new jobs to the area,” Moody Mayor Joe Lee said Tuesday. “That’s overall, from the office personnel to the coffee and tea to the food service.
“That’s a big economic impact for the city to have that many new jobs in St. Clair County, and some of those folks will choose to live in the city as well.”
Bowron attributed the delay in construction to high steel prices.
“We’ve been out here since 2008, and we absolutely love being a part of the Moody-St. Clair community,” Bowron said. “We’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences with the people here; we’ve hired a lot of people in the local community. With this addition, we hope to do so again with the new building.
“We certainly plan to bring out our existing employees (from the Birmingham location), but as those people retire or move on to other jobs, we hope to hire people from the area to fill those positions.”
Bowron added that the new construction on his 59-acre campus should not adversely affect the surrounding area, which is largely a rural and residential community.
“The community’s not going to really notice anything, other than that there will be another building deep in our property,” he said. “There are some highway concerns, in terms of intersections, which I think the state or county is going to address, just because of increased truck traffic.
“But it’s all very easily handled and shouldn’t impact the community, other than additional jobs and additional people that’ll be eating and buying things in the Moody area.”
Lee said he hopes the groundbreaking is a sign of an improving economy.
“With this many jobs located here, we’ve got to have services to supply them,” he said. “Grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations — people need to be able to spend that money locally. And I think it is having that impact on the economy locally.”