ROCHELLE — In November, Pure Flavor (formerly MightyVine) invited representatives from the City of Rochelle to Windsor, Ontario, Canada to see a similar facility that could be built in Rochelle. Pure Flavor currently operates a greenhouse in Rochelle and is considering expansion, City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh told the News-Leader Dec. 18.

City representatives on the Canada trip were City Council Members Rosaelia Arteaga and Ben Valdivieso, Economic Development Director Jason Anderson, Fiegenschuh, Lee County Industrial Development Association Director Tom Demmer, City Building Inspector Geoff Starr and Rochelle Fire Department Chief Dave Sawlsville. 

The facility city representatives toured in November is over a million square feet. It includes on-site living quarters and participation in a federal visa program that allows people to come in and live and work there for up to three years to help with packaging and picking of tomatoes.

“They're thinking about doing something similar here,” Fiegenschuh said, “It'd be a 10-month program. Their property isn't zoned for it now, so they couldn't do it here unless the property was rezoned and they haven't issued any type of application to rezone the property. They bought out MightyVine and wanted us to see their operations there. It was an opportunity for us to meet the ownership and their leadership team and talk about what some of their priorities for Rochelle are going into the future and their expansion plans. It gave us a chance to see their facility and how they operate. I was impressed. It was a very sophisticated operation.”

Fiegenschuh said he believes any type of positive growth is good for the city, and that on-site housing would be up to the city’s planning & zoning commission and ultimately the mayor and city council. The city put Pure Flavor in touch with its community development department if it wants to move forward with any type of rezoning or variance and nothing has been submitted yet. 

A potential expansion of the greenhouse facility would also impact Rochelle Municipal Utilities, the city-owned electric utility. RMU Superintendent of Electric Operations Blake Toliver said the utility would be able to service an expanded Pure Flavor facility.

With industrial electric load growth in mind, the city is currently in the easement acquisition phase of a new electrical substation project on the west side of town on Illinois Route 38. The project will include 10 miles of transmission line between the new substation and others at Ritchie Road and Twombly Road. The project will cost north of $20 million.

“That substation is being built to serve the needs of a Pure Flavor expansion as well as some other growth in that western edge of our territory,” Toliver said. “The whole point of building that substation is to be able to serve the needs of future industrial growth in that area. Right now Pure Flavor is 25 acres under glass and they'd like to be 50 acres. Right now their usage is around 14 megawatts at full load. We'd expect it to be 25-28 megawatts depending on the lighting they do. That substation would be capable of over 50 megawatts of energy. We'd be able to cover their load and still have some left over for another industrial development.”

Toliver said load growth is positive for RMU, the local economy and taxing bodies such as school districts. However, RMU strives to be cognizant of the choices it makes when dealing with topics like load growth due to its small customer base of 7,500 to make sure adverse impacts aren’t seen on customers. 

The city and RMU often meet with current business owners and prospective developers about expansions and new projects that could increase RMU’s electric load. 

“Looking at so much potential load growth can be very daunting,” Toliver said. “And you don't know what's going to stick. We have tons of meetings with developers all the time and they're constantly looking at land. As soon as one sticks, we move to planning on moving forward with getting the infrastructure and making sure we have enough power available. We may get 30 inquiries a month from interested developers. I always preface my emails back to economic development with, 'This is what we have today.' Because tomorrow it might be different.”