Winnebago and the city of Lake Mills have come to an agreement on the 5-year lease of the 100,000-square-foot plant formerly owned and operated by Cummins Filtration. The Lake Mills facility will be used for the production of Winnebago’s Class B motorhomes; initially the new Travato model built on the Ram ProMaster chassis.
“This is a definite win-win for us,” said Winnebago Chairman, CEO and President Randy Potts. “The Lake Mills facility is much larger than our current Class B production facility in Charles City and allows us to expand our growing Class B motorhome line. Winnebago’s Class B market share in the U.S. has been steadily rising with 17.9% market share calendar year to date through September 2013, compared to 16.5% in calendar 2012 and 7.8% in calendar 2011. With the close proximity of Lake Mills, it’s very cost effective to transport components and motorhomes the 16 miles between Lake Mills and our headquarters in Forest City. In turn, it allows us to transition our current Class B production facility in Charles City to additional subassembly operations. We plan to begin the process of staffing and equipping the Lake Mills facility immediately with the goal of starting initial production by early February. Our Charles City facility will continue to manufacture Class B’s as we transition to our Lake Mills facility, and move other subassembly operations to Charles City.”
But we might get a new hotel we don’t need that will give us maybe 20 part time jobs. Maybe not too.
Built by the people of Mason City, run by Hilton? What about the other 11 hotels… where is their help?
@LVS….that is a good point, why have plants all over north iowa but none in Mason City? The only reason I can come up with is the EDC completely dropped the ball on this one, or Winnebago contacted the EDC and chamber but could not get a deal worked out because all our tif money and incentives have already been spent bringing in minimum wage jobs for the call center and Marshalls. It is truly a head scratcher why they would not want to come to Mason City.
EDC mission in mc: KEEP THE WAGES LOW so Kraft, Curries, Armour, Mercy all the rest don’t have to compete. EDC is doing a bang up job of it.
Good for them and good for Lake Mills. I am glad to see this happen. Where is Mason City? Why does Winnebago have plants in Charles City, Forest City and now Lake Mills and not here in Mason City? There are a lot of people who travel to work for them that live right here in Mason City.
Of course they travel. We can’t have a plant like that in mc. So ppl here flee for the good jobs. EDC/chamber at its finest. This is what the ppl of mc wanted, right? Crap jobs, no new jobs, move businesses around and call it economic development. Huge mess, cant be fixed, end of story.