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Welcome to Warden

Poised and hoping for growth

Warden hopes for year-round, family wage jobs

By Matthew Weaver

Herald staff writer

PHOTOS: Jensen Farms Produce worker Jose Reyes winds string around a stack of onion bags in mid-April. Jensen Produce is one of the major employers in Warden.

One smells Warden before one sees Warden.

Which isn't a bad thing, in this circumstance.

And what does Warden smell like?

Onions so sweet it's tempting to bite right in, and processed potatoes.

Oh, and hope. Warden also smells a little bit like hope.

Perhaps chief among the newest hopeful developments in Warden is the erection of a bottling plant that will be used by Country Morning Farms.

It sits on a piece of property that the Port of Warden is in the process of selling to the company, and recently installed water and sewer lines to serve the future plant, Port manager Mike Conley said.

"We're fairly excited to get some new work up here in the county," Conley said. "They're going to bottle a lot more than just milk."

City administrator Mike Thompson said that the plant would also bottle juices and water.

The plant was originally supposed to be up and running in April, but is now expected to open in the summer. Conley said that the plant will immediately bring in 10 jobs, and then reach to 15 jobs fairly quickly.

Unemployment in Warden is not quite double the average of unemployment in Grant County, he said.

"It's a normal ag base," Thompson said. " We've got seasonal work."

Conley said that the biggest employers in Warden are Ochoa Foods, which operates in frozen potato products, and the Washington Potato Company, which deals with dehydrated potato products.

"Between the two of them, they have somewhat over 300 employees," Conley said.

Thompson said that 2,540 people live in Warden.

Other major employers in the Warden area are Jensen Farms Produce, which grows and packs onions, Skone & Connors, which packs potatoes and onions, fresh packed potato operation Atlantic Produce and Seminis Seed.

"For us, it's centrally located because we farm in Tri-Cities and north of Warden,"said Mark Johnson, chief of operations at Atlantic Produce, of having a plant in town. "There's a great labor pool to draw from right here in town, there's other packing facilities in town and we work together, so it's nice for trading product and stuff like that."

The area's primary agricultural products are potatoes and onions, Thompson said.

"But you can only grow spuds once out of four years, so you have to rotate your crops," Conley said. "So we have a lot of hay, and you get out east of here, you're in the dry lands, so that's pretty much grain — wheat, stuff like that."

Other agricultural products include beans, peas and corn.

Conley said that an attempt is being made to learn how to put together a farmer's market, out of a desire to create more business.

"I guess it depends on what kind of business you want to do," Thompson said when asked what kind of business would do well in Warden. "As far as agriculture-type stuff, we've got the storage and the processing and all that, so …"

Some of the advantages that Warden possesses are rail services and natural gas.

"Those are our two major pluses that gives Warden a base that other parts of the county don't have," Conley said.

Thompson said that the city owns about 240 acres of land that is used for spraying industrial waste water.

He said that the city is currently working with its processors to take care of a situation that arose last winter, when the city ran out of storage for waste water.

"Because we did run out of storage, the two processors were running heavier than they usually do, and so we ran out of room to store the water." Thompson explained. "What we had to do was get an order from Ecology to allow us to spray some during the winter just to keep those two processors running."

A piece of property was purchased by the Port about two years ago and sold to the city for further waste water lagoons, Conley said. The city also has plans for new lagoons south of town, in the dry lands, depending on Ochoa's needs.

Other parts of the land, currently being used for farming, are being held for industrial site development.

"The Port's pretty well positioned land-wise for growth in the future," Conley said. "We're interested in any company that provides year-round jobs. That's the big need: Year-round and family wage jobs, because that's what the town needs to support growth."

From a retail standpoint, Warden has empty storefronts, Conley said.

"Having a big Wal-Mart in Othello and Moses Lake has, in my opinion, taken a toll on our retail community in Warden," he said.

"We just lost our True Value hardware store here last year, so any of that kind of stuff, we have to go to Moses Lake or Othello to find," Thompson said.

But Warden has two grocery stores: the Town and Country Mark-It and Five Foods, which opened two months ago; it used to be a Value Plus store.

Roland Hansen, owner and manager of the Mark-It, said he has owned the store for 20 years.

"I think all the businesses are struggling to compete with larger stores in Moses Lake," Hansen said. "I think the lack of volume dictates the variety that's available in Warden."

Hansen said his store has to provide the things that his customers won't be able to get in Moses Lake.

Also, "We have to try and give them fresh produce, fresh meat, good service, even though we might not have the size and variety," he said. "Our meat department tries to cut specialty cuts. We've had to focus on the majority of our population here, which is the Hispanic people."

Hansen said he thought that the city needs to try and stimulate growth in the community in the form of incentives for smaller businesses and residential builders to develop in Warden.

And what of having two grocery stores in town?

"I believe it's going to be a struggle because the previous owner of the other store was in (Warden) for 30 or 40 years," Hansen said. "There still wasn't enough volume to have both stores exist. We're probably a one store tow, but I welcome anybody that wants to come to Warden and try. I wish them all the luck in the world."

The owner of Five Foods disagrees with Hansen's assessment of Warden as a one-store town.

"(We got) a lot of good response from the Hispanic population and the farmers," said Kuki Singh. "Warden needed another store. They're used to having two stores. They don't have to take a trip to Wal-Mart. It's a long drive to go to Moses Lake or Othello. The community's had a pretty good response.

While open, the store is still in the process of getting entirely set up, Singh said. He expects to have three or four employees, and estimated that the store's grand opening would take place soon.

Singh and his family said that they wanted to thank all of the Warden people, the schools, the Hispanic community and all of the farmers for the wonderful welcome to the community.

"Everyone tells us, 'Oh, we're glad that you opened the store,' " he said.