When TG Missouri gave Perryville a Christmas gift last month by announcing a $97 million expansion at its local plant over the next three years and a promise to maintain at least 1,600 full-time jobs with benefits, a discussion about the lack of housing in town could be heard once more in coffee shops, offices and homes throughout the city.
As Perryville finds itself in a location ripe for experiencing population growth, where will they live when they come here? Simply put, how to provide housing for those wanting to move to town now or in the future has created a frustrating conundrum where it’s difficult to draw employers to a town where housing is in short supply and equally difficult to find builders willing to construct housing before people move to town to buy them.
According to Perryville City Administrator Brent Buerck, the opportunity for growth is real.
“We're seeing commercial development unlike anything we've ever seen, as far as volume — and one after another,” he said. “I think that will continue because we're well-positioned, but housing is still an issue. We're working hard to fix that.
“Our zoning ordinances date back to 1969. The world's changed a lot in those 55 years, so we're going to look at rewriting our zoning ordinances, and we hope that's done in the fiscal year. The first part of that process is to look at the requirements to build a house in Perryville and see if it aligns with what the market allows for the infrastructure and the investment with the cost of materials. It's different than it was 60 years ago, so we have to keep pace.”
Crystal Jones, executive director of Perry County Economic Development Authority (EDA), also sees the need for new housing in Perryville.
“Aside from TG, just in general, we need more housing, and it's at all levels,” she said. You know, some people think we have a lot of higher-end housing, but we actually don't have enough of the higher-end homes either.”
Jones spoke about a housing gap analysis the EDA completed late last year that showed there was a demand for housing at all price levels.
“For example, in the $275,000 to $375,000 category, we need about 50 new homes for sale to fill the need. And this is just based on a desktop review of household income and what people are looking for. We do need lower-income housing as well, but we also need it in that upper-income level, too.”
As far as the planned expansion at TG, Jones sees this as good news for the community.
“It just really solidifies their position as one of our top employers,” she said. “Their commitment to retain 1,600 jobs means that we'll have those 1,600 jobs for the Perry County community, which is always a good thing. They employ more than that now, so the 1,600 is what they're saying is the minimum that they would employ.
“Being able to retain that number of jobs is really good. But yeah, housing is an issue. It's an issue at the lower-income levels and the higher-income levels. We're losing some of our higher-income earner residents to neighboring communities, and they're commuting into work, so we definitely need more housing at all levels.”
Commenting on TG’s planned expansion in Perryville, Buerck said, “As the world grows and as TG has options all across North America at this point, TG USA was the first North American location. Now, there are eight or 10 of them between Canada, the US and Mexico. So, whenever they're looking for an expansion, we want to be part of that conversation. And in this case, we were. It's not new employees; it's a commitment to keep existing employees. But part of that process — as they get more efficient in their operations — is they're going to add lines. Currently, we're not doing anything on electric vehicles, for example. And now there's going to be — not necessarily batteries or something like that — but there's going to be components for electric cars that are going to be made in Perryville.
“I think it's a forward-looking investment for them, but for us, it continues to make us viable among their portfolio of options. Do other companies look at that and say, ‘Hey, if they’re expanding, we might be interested in going there?’ I think so. I think that’s absolutely part of the equation. That the governor himself wanted to make the announcement was significant, too. We’re very happy that the state of Missouri is happy about what TG is doing here locally.”
As far as expanding available housing for TG employees, as well as other companies that may consider moving to Perryville, Jones believes the city is moving the needle a little, but much more housing is needed right away.
“The city started a program a couple of years ago that actually sunsets in March, so we're coming to the tail end of it,” she said. “They were giving up to $15,000 to a developer or even a homeowner constructing their own house if they built in the city limits, and that has helped. I think that at last count, the city had added something like 75 bedrooms to the community based on that program.”
