FORT SCOTT - American Made Plastic Inc., a California housewares manufacturer known as AmericanMaid, is coming to Fort Scott and plans to hire about 100 people in its first year at the former Timken building at 4505 Campbell Drive, city officials said Tuesday.
City Manager Brad Matkin announced the news in a Facebook post, writing that the company "has chosen Fort Scott, Kansas, as its new home" and that additional job growth is expected in years two and three. AmericanMaid, based in Riverside, California, has made American-made houseware products for more than 30 years, according to the post.
Mary Wyatt, the city's director of business development, said in an interview Tuesday that the company was drawn to Fort Scott because it ships nationwide and wanted a central location.
"They were really attracted to Fort Scott being so centrally located within the United States because they ship everywhere," Wyatt said.
Wyatt said she did not expect the company to bring employees with it. The owner and his family, including his two sons, are expected to come to Fort Scott, she said.
The jobs will be in manufacturing, which Wyatt called the company's "bread and butter." She said the company intends to fill the positions quickly.
"They don't want to spend a year figuring things out," Wyatt said. "They're ready to go and they want those 100 people now."
The company has said it plans to expand in years two and three but has not given a job figure for that growth, Wyatt said. She said the owner has also discussed building additional structures on the site for storage so the company can manufacture and distribute from one location, though those plans are not set in stone.
The building sale has been in escrow for a few months, Wyatt said, and Timken is the seller. The company has not set an official move-in date but plans to move quickly, she said.
The company sought no incentives from the city and did not ask for a property tax abatement, Wyatt said. It did work directly with the Kansas Department of Commerce on state tax credits, she said, a process that she, Matkin and Steve Mason were aware of but not involved in. Mason is a former Timken employee who Matkin has singled out for helping make the transition possible.
"The city did not offer any incentives," Wyatt said. "Right now we don't have any incentives in particular for business other than our small business grant incentive program, and obviously theirs is too large of a business to qualify for that."
Rail spur moves forward
The project also advances plans for the rail spur to the industrial park, Wyatt said. Matkin told her earlier Tuesday that the railroad has approved the spur and its location, she said, and Matkin confirmed to the Monitor that the railroad is BNSF. That leaves the project in the hands of the new owner, who is "highly motivated" to pursue it because the company distributes nationwide and counts Walmart among its major customers.
"It will massively impact this project," Wyatt said.
Building the spur will be up to the new owner financially, Wyatt said, whether alone or in partnership with other businesses.
"The city will not be involved financially with any part of that," Wyatt said.
A rail spur is a short stretch of track that branches off a main line so a business can load and unload railcars at its own site rather than trucking freight to the nearest rail yard. BNSF's main line runs just east of the Campbell Drive plant.
Matkin first reported progress on the spur at the July 21 city commission meeting, FortScott.biz reported, telling commissioners he had found an economic development contact at the railroad who was willing to bring a spur up to the south of the Timken and former Valu Merchandisers buildings.
"It sounds very possible that we will be getting a railroad spur out to Industrial Park," Matkin said at the meeting, calling it "huge for economic development in the future, because not that many industries have spurs going behind them."
Matkin said then that he wanted the track to run behind the Timken building so other industrial park companies could use it, and that the building's buyer had told him the spur was "very important to them."
Timken announced in November 2023 that it would wind down its Fort Scott belts plant, which employed about 155 people, and closed it in 2025.
In his post, Matkin thanked former Timken staff, including Mason, for their cooperation in the transition and called the announcement "another important step toward building a stronger economic future for Fort Scott."
