Art’s-Way planning new, expanded facility following fire

Less than three months after losing several laboratories in a fire that completely destroyed a building at its Monona, Iowa site, Art’s-Way Manufacturing Co. is planning a brand new, larger facility, company officials say.

On January 19, a massive fire destroyed a building housing offices, a production area and laboratories at Art’s-Way Scientific in Monona. No one was injured and important servers and computer files were recovered undamaged. The building and most of its contents, however, were not so lucky.

“It was a total loss,” said Chief Financial Officer Carrie Majeski. “It burned to the ground.”

But not before the quick action of the first person on the scene – a volunteer firefighter who also happened to be an Art’s-Way employee.

“One of the guys, in our employ, was on the volunteer fire department,” said Dan Palmer of Art’s-Way. “He got to the plant early - didn’t even have his gear with him – broke though the window and got the file server out, grabbed a couple personal computers, things like that.”

That forethought helped the company get back on its feet quicker than it would have otherwise, Palmer said.

“You know, again, that’s what it’s like to live in a small town,” he said.

(Click on the play button, below, to hear Dan Palmer talk about the volunteer firefighter’s quick action.)

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Fire officials said the blaze was very likely due to a faulty heating system.

The company lost no orders as a result of the fire and continues to take orders unabated, Majeski said. Due to the nature of the business and a conveniently-located nearby building, all projects proceeded as planned.

“We’re running full production in a much smaller facility for the interim, making plans to finalize a new building that we hope to be into here by end of ‘07,” Majeski said.

The company hasn’t determined if the new facility will be built on the site of the old building.

The fire came just six months after Art’s-Way acquired Techspace Inc., which previously owned the site. Techspace, Inc. designed, manufactured, and installed custom modular research and diagnostic buildings for laboratory research, biocontainment for Homeland Security, public health, and general laboratory requirements.

Majeski said that since the acquisition was still fairly new, any staffing changes had not yet been decided upon.

“It was a new acquisition in August,” Majeski said. “And we were getting it up and rolling and the fire hit. We were dealing with a lot of unknowns.”

The building that was lost was 36,000 square feet. The company is now looking at constructing a 50,000 square foot facility.

“The old building only really allowed us to work on four to five buildings at a time, and this new building will let us work on at least 10 buildings at any given time,” Majeski said.

“In the old building it was very difficult to move around and the flow of building was very difficult,” Majeski said. “This will allow us to move forward moving buildings along at a different pace that won’t hang up the rest of the production.”