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Wind turbine facility planned

Plant near Windsor would create 400 jobs

John Rebchook, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 20, 2007 at midnight

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Denmark-based Vestas Wind Systems is negotiating to build a plant near Windsor in northern Colorado that would create more than 400 jobs.

The Vestas plant could put Colorado on the map as a center for renewable energy and serve as a catalyst for other businesses in the field, said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., who met with Vestas officials in Windsor on Friday.

The deal was first reported Friday afternoon on the Northern Colorado Business Report Web site. The business journal quoted unidentified sources as saying that Vestas is close to building a 180,000-square-foot plant in the Great Western Industrial Park, a 700-acre business center owned by Denver-based Broe Cos. The park is east of the Kodak plant.

"We have met with (Vestas), we are talking to them, and we would love to have them here," said Alex Yeros, Broe's managing director for the Great West Industrial Park. "We think our park is perfectly suited for this company and other companies in the renewable energy field."

Clark said his office was first contacted by Vestas, which supplies about 35 percent of the wind turbines in the world, about five months ago. Clark said he referred the company to the Upstate Colorado Economic Development group when it determined the Great West Industrial Park was the best site for Vestas.

"It was an undisclosed company that was in the renewable alternative energy field," Clark said. "Later, when we found out they were the largest wind turbine manufacturer in the world, and we started thinking this is more than jobs - this is a catalyst."

Clark said the jobs will pay "above the median wage" for the area but he wasn't sure of the salary range.

He said the company, which has more than 12,000 employees worldwide, is a strong believer in educating its work force for its specialized production. For example, it creates its own specialized paint for the giant wind turbine blades that would be manufactured in the Windsor plant, he said.

Most of the modest incentives that will be offered from the state and local sources will be for education, Clark said.

He said that rail access was critical to Vestas.

"That's why the Broe land is perfect for them," Clark said.

The wind turbine facility would be near the Owens-Illinois bottling plant and Front Range Energy Inc.'s ethanol plant.

Vestas, in a filing with Dutch security regulators in November, said it planned to open two plants in 2007 - one in the U.S. and the other in Spain - for about $117 million. Each plant would manufacture about 2,400 giant wind turbine blades annually.

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