NLR Prime Quality feed mill closing

LITTLE ROCK — The Prime Quality Feeds mill, a North Little Rock landmark since the 1920s, will cease operations at the end of the week, introducing the possibility of more downtown redevelopment.

Mountaire Corp. sold its Prime Quality brand to Minneapolis-based Cargill Animal Nutrition earlier this year, and the plant continued to manufacture feed for 10 months. But now Cargill is moving the brand's production to a new plant in Byhalia, Miss., eliminating the need for the North Little Rock mill.

The facility employs about 25 hourly and 15 salaried employees, said Dee Ann Landreth, president of Mountaire. Most of the employees will stay through next week to ship out inventory and clean up, and a few will transfer to Cargill.

David Feider, spokesman for Cargill, wrote in an e-mail that the new facility in Mississippi is "a state-of-the-art feed mill facility designed to help improve product quality - technology enables us to ensure more uniformity in product - and service."

The old plant, located at 124 E. Fifth St., produced about 60,000 tons of feed a year for a variety of animals.

"A lot of feed companies have shut their businesses in major metro areas down for obvious reasons," Landreth said.

And now the site will most likely be redeveloped. Landreth said the company is talking with a possible buyer, but she's unable to say anything further because of confidentiality agreements.

North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Hays said that while the city has known for a while that the plant would probably shut down, the loss of those jobs will hurt.

"Yet while we're not happy about losing jobs, we're excited about the opportunities for that land to perhaps be used for opportunities that would enhance the ongoing development that has begun very strongly in our urban area," he said.

Of the six-square blocks between Fourth and Seventh streets, Hays said the city and Mountaire own 90 percent of that land. "The entire area could be utilized in a comprehensive way," he said. "We certainly are committed to working as both a partner as well as a city with either the present or future ownership of the Mountaire property."

He said that one idea that had been discussed - although only hypothetically - would be to create some dense residential development in that area.

Michael Drake, director at North Little Rock's Main Street Argenta, a city-funded downtown development agency, said the closing "opens up central downtown to exciting possibilities."

However, "this is the end of an era for them and for us, and it's a bittersweet time," he added.

Landreth said the only area of the Mountaire operation affected by the closing was Mountaire Feed Inc. The rest of the company's operations are poultry farming, she said, and the company's corporate offices will stay in North Little Rock.