MERDI evolves

By Gerard O’Brien - 02/03/2008

The Belmont Mine headframe, lights shining red against the dark night sky, is pictured in East Butte in this Montana Standard file photo.

Diversification is the key to a growing community, especially one that has relied on one industry, namely copper mining, for more than 100 years.

While Butte is enjoying a resurgence with high copper prices, the reality is that the copper mine’s life span is only about 20 years.

Butte is on the right path to economic diversification and Butte’s MERDI (Montana Economic Revitalization and Development Institute) is helping with that effort.

MERDI has undergone several evolutions in its short, 34-year life span. It started in 1974 by the late Sen. Mike Mansfield as the umbrella for the federally funded MHD coal-fired research project. It is now the overseer of MSE Applied Technologies in the industrial park.

“Today, our mission is education, enterprise and infrastructure,” said Jim Kambich, president and CEO.” MERDI basically acts as a broker to bring new business to southwest Montana specifically and the state in general. It researches projects, looks for funding and land for siting a business, and helps with transportation issues.

Located in the five-story historic Thornton Building on East Broadway, MERDI employs a staff of 12, has a payroll of about $700,000 and it pays about $24,000 in property taxes annually.

MERDI has had its hand in many projects over the years. For example, MERDI was instrumental in helping Montana Resources find the funding to reopen the mine back in 2003.

East Side Revitalization Through a series of land exchanges, MERDI acquired several acres on Butte’s East Side from Arco, much of it contaminated with railroad waste from the rail yard that sat adjacent to the Berkeley Pit.

Since then, through its Continental Land Trust, it has remediated much of that land, greening it up to attract the Senior Citizens Belmont Center, skateboard park, Maroon Activity Center, CCCS headquarters, AWARE housing and the Water and Environmental Technology building in the Moonlight business center. Other businesses are now starting to locate along Park and Mercury Streets.

“One of the realities of living in Butte is that you have normal infrastructure that stems from our historical mining legacy. The East Side development underscores what we mean by using the existing infrastructure to attract business,” said Gary Rowe, chief financial officer for MERDI.

At the same time, Rowe points out, “One of the difficulties we see with Butte-Silver Bow is that it is infrastructure-rich Uptown, yet all the See MERDI, Page D10 growth is occurring on the Flat, where it is infrastructure-poor.” For example, a new subdivision southeast of the city needs water and sewer lines to it. Butte is not in a position to extend them to that subdivision. How that will play out has yet to be determined.

Removing the Rust Belt MERDI looks for opportunities where others might walk away.

The Galen campus, located in the Deer Lodge valley, between Anaconda and Warm Springs, was about to be abandoned by the state in the 1990s.

“The state was going to fence it off and walk away,” Kambich said. “The Galen campus had a good infrastructure, so we mobilized our resources, worked with CCCS (for a federal youth holding facility), AWARE housing and the Anaconda Local Development Corp. to put $1.7 million in improvements out there.” Today there are 125 jobs in the valley where there would have been none.

“We try to curb the rust belt mentality,” Kambich said.

Aerospace engineering Another example of melding education and enterprise is the aerospace rocket and jet engine testing facility at the former location of Stauffer Chemical west of Butte.

Kambich became aware that a testing facility in the Mojave Desert was being dismantled. After about four years of work, and approval by the TIFIF board last fall, the site is being prepared for a rocket testing facility.

Stanford University’s Space Propulsion Group has a high interest in using the site. It is difficult to test rocketry in the country unless you can get on a two-year waiting list. Here, engineering plans will be in place mid-March and testing may begin as early as June.

Further, Stanford has approached Montana Tech to bring an aerospace engineering degree to the campus.

“They were very impressed with Tech’s facilities,” Kambich said. Also, other aerospace firms, such as ATK aerospace, Alliance Technologies, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin.

“All these firms are showing a significant interest in locating offices in Butte, Montana,” Kambich said.

And speaking of offices, MERDI also rents out office space in the Thornton building.

The building is hot wired with a so-called “OC-48” internet connection, sort of 2,400 T1’s, said Rowe.

“We are the only commercial data center in the community,” he said. “We have had lots of companies ask us about using our hardware for transmitting data. So, it occurred to us that we could become a high-tech incubator of sorts. Now firms are starting to show an interest.

For example, there are two oil and gas trading firms in the building, which need reliable internet connections that never fail.

There is a light manufacturing firm, Infomine, which builds emergency communication systems to replace the 911 system if it fails, as it did during Hurricane Katrina.

Spath engineering from Oregon plans to locate there as well, which will bring a host of engineers to complement MSE.

Building on the technology can only help lure more firms to Butte. MERDI hopes to be at the forefront of that.