Mountaire halts office-space effort in Sussex
Mountaire Farms withdrew a land-use request made of Sussex County that would have paved the way for a new office complex on cropland near Millsboro — and, the land's neighbors feared, eventually evolve into a chicken processing plant.
An attorney for Mountaire canceled an application for a conditional use on the property in a April 14 letter to county government. "No further application is anticipated," the lawyer, Dennis L. Schrader, wrote. A Mountaire executive who had spoken about the proposal in March, Michael Tirrell, did not immediately return a message seeking comment Monday.
Tirrell had said in an interview, and in a community meeting with nearby residents, that the company simply wanted the parcel for accommodating its business office needs. "It is not our intention to build a production or manufacturing facility there," Tirell said last month. "If the land's not suitable for what we want it for then we won't proceed."
Many neighbors, though, said they suspected Mountaire, a major poultry processor, would come to use the land to expand its industrial work. Mountaire now operates a large processing plant just east of Millsboro, along with a plant in Selbyville and a feed mill in Frankford. It is part of a broader corporation, Mountaire Corp., headquartered in Arkansas, and Mountaire Farms says it employs 6,000 people in Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina.
Some also said the poultry firm shouldn't try to expand into a part of the region where several new housing developments have been built recently.
Maria Payan of Socially Responsible Agricultural Project said locals who organized to oppose the land use proposal almost certainly contributed to Mountaire's about-face. "They put up a lot of yard signs: 'Love thy neighbor, no Mountaire,'" Payan said Monday. "People are not going to buy [houses] where they think Mountaire's setting up shop."
Richard Eaton, a nearby homeowner, also credited local opposition with influencing Mountaire.
"I guess the small guys did win," Eaton said. "This is a victory for us."
Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.