Janicki groundbreaking is July 10, company launches Montana website
Updated 2 p.m. July 13 with current large water user information
Janicki Industries is hosting a ceremonial groundbreaking at 18th Avenue North and 67th Street at noon on July 10.
Janicki has launched its Montana page and the Great Falls Development Alliance has posted a frequently asked questions page.
No permits have yet been issued for construction, which the Janicki team told the city planning office will likely begin around the end of July.
Janicki is still going through site due diligence, such as soil testing, Lonnie Hill, deputy city planning director, told The Electric at the end of June.
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Bruce Haman, city building official, told The Electric that Janicki requested to do some site work after the ceremonial groundbreaking, such as “clearing and grubbing,” which is allowed once stormwater pollution prevention and dust control plans have been approved by the city.
Haman said it’s a normal practice even before permitting, and that extensive below-grade excavation may also take place while the project is in plan review.
Currently, core drilling for soil analysis is being done on the site, he said.
Moving dirt on a construction site, Haman said, is often a normal process if the appropriate construction documents are in order.
Janicki has leased office space at 410 Central for use as the new campus is built in AgriTech Park.
It will not be a permanent space, Nick Lavacca, Janicki’s spokesman, told The Electric.
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Lavacca said it will likely take a decade to ramp up to the planned 2,000 employees at the new Great Falls campus, but the company anticipates about 1,000 employees within the next five years or so.
The company looks to use about 15-20 percent of its staff to help establish and train those who will be working at the Great Falls campus, he said, but that percentage will decrease as the local campus gets established.
” So, if we have 200 employees when we open the doors for the first part of the first building, we feel 30-40 will be from Washington or Utah. Some will be recruited from around the country at career fairs or through other recruitment processes and that will be ongoing,” Lavacca said.
He said Janicki anticipates that some local Great Falls hires will train at its Washington or Utah campuses.
Lavacca said hiring for the Great Falls campus is a ways out, but the human resources officer will be communicating the process as that time approaches.
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A delegation from Great Falls, including city, county and Great Falls Public Schools officials, toured the Washington campus in early June and met with a range of employees.
“It is not either ‘janitor or engineer’ type of work. There are a wide range of assembly, fabrication, millwrights, accounting, warehouse, transportation, and many other positions that do not require an engineering degree. Engineers support production and work closely with the techs and managers during the production process. It is a collaboration of people working together that allows us to meet or exceed our customers’ expectations,” Lavacca said, and pay ranges will depend on skills, degrees, job types and longevity with the company.
In Washington, Lavacca said it took time for Janicki to develop programs such as the Janicki School Partnership Programs with local high schools for student interns.
The company also supports K-12 education, Lavacca said, by filling seats on advisory boards, making on-campus presentations, offering resume/application training and mock interview days, career fairs, internships and job shadowing.
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Janicki representatives meet with officials at community colleges, trade schools and universities to help develop and support their programs, develop maker spaces, student-led capstone projects, internships and career fairs, he said.
Several readers asked about Janicki’s potential water and power usage, so The Electric asked.
Lavacca said that Janicki doesn’t use water for its production process, similar to ADF.
He said the company’s water usage is generally for restrooms and hand washing, but they also powerwash the buildings for cleaning and water landscaping.
Lavacca said he estimates Janicki’s electricity usage is also comparable to ADF’s operations, but likely less since it won’t be a full welding shop.
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On Janicki’s new Montana page, the company anticipates the Great Falls campus will use about 3.1 million kilowatt-hours of power and 5.2 million gallons of water per year.
For comparison with other large water users in the area, according to Great Falls Public Works:
- Calumet: 45 million gallons annually
- Malmstrom Air Force Base: 20 million gallons annually
- City of Great Falls: almost 14 million gallons annually
- Benefis Health System: just over 13 million gallons annually
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that a person uses 80-100 gallons of water daily. At the low-end of 80 gallons, that equates to about 4.5 million gallons used daily by Great Falls residents, not factoring in other commercial uses or agricultural uses in the Great Falls area.
During a June 12 meeting, County Commissioner Joe Briggs said he’d gone on the trip to Janicki’s Washington headquarters.
He said the delegation met several people there who are from Montana and view the new Great Falls location as an opportunity to get home.
“I hope everybody in Cascade County can get as excited about this prospect as I am,” Briggs said.
Jolene Schalper of the Great Falls Development Authority said about 30 percent of Janicki employees are engineers and the company recruits heavily from the universities in Bozeman and Butte.
She said the company is headquartered in a small community, so to Janicki officials, Great Falls is a big city.
Schalper said the company looked at communities in 20 states, narrowed it to 12, and eventually selected Great Falls.
“They felt like we were the least big city out of the big cities,” she said.
The company’s operational start in Great Falls will take time, she said.
“This is not that we need 2,000 houses next week,” and 70-80 percent of the employees the company will hire are already here, she said. “As they get more work and grow, the community will grow with them.”
Briggs said the amount of equipment the company uses is “extraordinary” and large, so once it’s set, it won’t move.
He said the company has previously expanded campuses in segments so Janicki officials are looking forward to building a clean-slate facility.
Some Janicki clients want their projects to be isolated from others, so some areas on the existing campuses require security clearances and some don’t allow entrance to any non-U.S. citizen, Briggs said.
During their visit, Briggs said they saw wings for a drone and walked by parts for Artemis.
Schalper said one of the people they met on their tour, who was running nondestructive testing, was from Vaughn.
During the June 16 City Commission meeting, City Manager Greg Doyon said a city team went on the trip to Janicki and the company “seems to be an excellent fit for Great Falls.”
He said the city team will need to be disciplined to execute permitting and review for the project and that the tour gave staff a better understanding of the interdepartmental cooperation that will be required.
“This project isn’t going to happen overnight,” Doyon said.
Janicki officials had longstanding connections in Montana before selecting Great Falls as their new location.
According to a press release, Jack McInerney of Swan Land Company and his brother Tim McInerney of McInerney Real Estate in Great Falls, co-brokered the land sale between GFDA and Janicki.
Jack McInerney has known Janicki Industries president John Janicki for nearly 14 years, from a professional introduction in Washington to an annual tradition of hunting together in Montana, according to a Swan Land Company release.
“John and his family have been coming out to hunt with us almost every year for 12 years,” Jack McInerney said in a release. “When he called about three and a half years ago and said Janicki was thinking about expanding out of Washington, my first thought was Great Falls. I knew the community, and I knew what Janicki stood for. It felt like the right fit from the start. I immediately reached out to my brother, Tim, who had the perfect connections to make things happen.”
