Hickey Anticipates December Completion for 25K Addition
SALEM, Ohio – Structural steel is up on Hickey Metal Fabrication’s seventh building – and the company already is looking at a potential eighth building to accommodate its growing business.
Hickey Metal Fabrication broke ground Monday on a 25,000-square-foot addition, that will house new automation and high-volume equipment the company is acquiring, said Adam Hickey, vice president.
The company has six existing buildings with a total workforce of 185 and will look to add as many as 30 workers when the addition is completed, which is expected in December, he said. Hickey Metal Fabrication owns 30 acres behind plant buildings two and three, and there are plans for another building on that property.
“It could be 18 to 24 months down the road,” with earth work already having been done at the site, according to Hickey.
“This is a hometown business, born and bred right here in Salem,” said Salem Mayor Cyndi Dickey. “For them to be able to expand and have such success, employ people and add back into the city is a wonderful thing and a great example to other businesses who might want to come to Salem.”
The addition is to accommodate a rise in business, said,Leo Hickey, CEO and president.
“We have a lot of different industries we work for. So when somebody slows up, somebody else might be busy,” he said. “We also have a very good core of customers that have some pretty large backlogs.”
The company has been fortunate, as its existing customers have remained busy even during the pandemic and it has picked up new clients as well.
“We’ve continued to grow and our customers’ outlook is very strong. We need to continue to add capacity to stay ahead of our customers,” Adam Hickey said.
Construction challenges for the project included maximizing the building’s square footage and handling the storm water, said C. Tucker Cope, president of C. Tucker Cope & Associates, the Columbiana-based general contractor.
The building design incorporated underground chambers into the design to address the storm water issue, Cope said. To give Hickey the desired square footage, Cope will build two bays accommodating either five- or 10-ton cranes. All of the columns are set up for jib cranes that can be added later, he said.
The metal-fabrication company is in its fourth generation of family ownership and is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.
“We burn it, bend it, weld it, assemble it, powder coat it [and] ship it out the door,” Adam Hickey said. “We do many component parts for different customers and we’re building other people’s products.”
The company’s customer base is “pretty diverse” but sectors include truck trailers, towing and recovery, fitness equipment and “some military work,” he said.
The company worked with the Sustainable Opportunity Development – or SOD – Center in Salem and city officials to help finance the expansion.
Hickey Metal Fabrication has been “great partners with the city” and “very generous” with donations locally, Mayor Dickey said. “We in turn want to help them to be able to expand and to make their progress easier,” she remarked.
Among the incentives the city provided was a 50%, 15-year property tax abatement.
“That’s a pretty good chunk of money,” she said.
Pictured at top: Leo Hickey, Mayor Cyndi Dickey, C. Tucker Cope
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
