Long-vacant factory gets a counter plan

Cambria expands into Belle Plaine plant

By Tim Krohn

BELLE PLAINE — For a decade, the massive and luxurious building alongside Highway 169 in Belle Plaine was a painful reminder of a business failure and a burden for local taxpayers.

Now the former Excelsior-Henderson motorcycle factory has a new life as the growing Cambria company moves in.

“To have it used and have cars parked there again, it’s a good feeling,” said Belle Plaine City Administrator David Murphy.

Murphy isn’t just happy to have a new business and more jobs in town. Because the city had provided financial assistance on the building, taxpayers have been on the hook for a $100,000-a-year subsidy for the past six years.

Le Sueur-based Cambria bought the building for a reported $5.7 million from Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos.

Cambria, with a major manufacturing plant just north of Le Sueur, makes quartz kitchen countertops. The engineered stone has the look and feel of granite.

Founded by the Davis family in 2001, Cambria produces hundreds of tons of quartz surfaces each day.

Murphy said Cambria plans to hire about 60 employees at the new plant, which will be used for production and storage. He said there could eventually be as many as 100 employees.

Marty Davis, Cambria CEO and president, said he was reluctant to go into details about the project because Belle Plaine residents have been frustrated by other plans that didn’t pan out. He said they are just beginning to bring in equipment and develop operational plans for the plant.

The city had provided Excelsior-Henderson with tax-increment financing for the 170,000-square-foot building. It is a subsidy that uses the property taxes on the building to pay off the public financing. When the motorcycle company went under, the city was forced to make the annual payments to meet the loan obligation.

When Cambria bought the building from Ryan Cos., the city received $500,000 as final payment on the outstanding balance for the tax-increment financing.

“It’s very nice. There’s more activity there each day, more cars parked there every day,” Murphy said.

Cambria already owns another warehouse building in Belle Plaine, which it will continue to use.

The Excelsior-Henderson story is a long and often tragic one.

The Henderson motorcycle company opened in 1912 and produced four-cylinder motorcycles. They were the largest and fastest motorcycles of their time and appealed to sport riders and police departments.

In 1917 Henderson was sold to Ignaz Schwinn, owner of Schwinn bicycle company and the Excelsior motorcycle company. Schwinn abruptly shut down the Excelsior-Henderson business in 1931 as the Great Depression hit.

In the early 1990s, brothers Dan and Dave Hanlon bought the rights to the Excelsior-Henderson brand, intending to resurrect the historic motorcycle and tap into a market dominated by Harley Davidson.

The project began in 1994 and more than $100 million in investment capital was raised. The large new plant in Belle Plaine, built in 1997, was criticized early on by some investors who thought it extravagant.

There were delays in the design and marketing of the motorcycles, with the plant finally opening in the spring of 1999. Nearly 2,000 motorcycles were produced (the eventual goal was for 20,000 bikes per year).

But by December 1999 the company was out of money and filed for bankruptcy. Investors lost everything. The inventory of the plant was auctioned off, with many people who had purchased motorcycles buying spare parts that would be available nowhere else in the future.

Ryan Cos. took control of the property in 2001. In 2004 a business that planned to make dietary supplements from alfalfa was going to purchase the building, but that company also went bankrupt.