By Logan B. Anderson

HARRINGTON — Many have contemplated the question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? When it comes to the city of Harrington’s newest project, the question may be what came first, industry or the industrial park. The answer will be industry — if all goes as planned.

On Tuesday, the city of Harrington’s Planning & Zoning Commission met to discuss conceptual plans for a new industrial-use building on Clukey Drive off U.S. 13 behind the Pepsi Bottling Venturers building.

Newton Properties III, LLC — part of the Bridgeville-based O.A. Newton family of companies — wants to build a 53,333-square-foot manufacturing facility at 299 Clukey Drive. The area is part of the former Pliant Corporation industrial campus.

Rob Rider, CEO of O.A. Newton, told the planning and zoning commission that the building will be a powder coating facility.

“It’s a dry powder process that is sprayed on treated metal. The metal is pretreated to clean it and then the powder is sprayed on and then baked … Most anything that you get that’s subject to the environment outside is done through a powder coating,” Mr. Rider said.

“It’s much better environmentally than painting. But it’s basically coating metal where they basically put a negative charge on the metal. The powder gets attracted to it and then you put it in an oven at 350 degrees. It’s self-contained; there’s no external waste.”

In describing how the plant will work, Mr. Rider compared the facility to what’s used in Delaware’s largest industry — poultry production.

“Those of you that have lived in Sussex or Kent County most of your life know what a chicken conveyor looks like, where they process poultry. It’s kind of like that. We hang the parts on a conveyor and then it goes through a wash and then dries. (It) then gets actually robotically sprayed with the powder and that’s where it’s all self-contained and gets recycled,” Mr. Rider said.

He added the plant will service many customers. Its main client will be O.A. Newton’s Bridgeville manufacturing facility.

“Right now, it’s actually going from Bridgeville, to York, Pennsylvania, back to Bridgeville and then to another customer. In terms of efficiency, we’re actually saving,” Mr. Rider said.

When at full capacity, the facility could have about 20 employees mixed between two shifts.

The permitting process for the facility may have a few more steps than other industrial firms that want to come to Harrington since it’s moving forward before the city has started work on its planned industrial park.

For example, currently Harrington’s building code would require that the facility be built with sidewalks. Industrial parks typically don’t have sidewalks and the city hasn’t reached that part of their planning phase yet, so Newton Properties will have to apply for a variance.

That prospect doesn’t seem to bother Mr. Rider.

“Because we’re kind of ahead of the curve with this particular one, our idea is ultimately to conform to what the whole industrial park would be someday because I think this is a great vision for the city of Harrington to have multiple industrial properties in there,” he said Tuesday.

The industrial park would encompass more than 130 acres and potentially have 20 different lots available for development.
“This is a property that’s been zoned manufacturing since it was annexed back in the 1970s. It’s been utilized for manufacturing use since the 1970s,” said interim city planner Jeremy Rothwell Tuesday.

On Monday, the state’s Council on Development Finance announced it was giving Harrington $1 million to develop the industrial park area.

The money comes from the state’s Site Readiness Fund and will be used for engineering and planning of the project and roadway and utility work.

Tuesday’s meeting was just the start of the process to approve the Newton Properties powder coating project. Now the engineers will prepare site plans that will then come back before the Planning & Zoning Commission for approval before they receive a final nod from Harrington City Council.