“MARSHALLTOWN has seen substantial growth over the past 50 years, yet this is the first time in those 50 years that we’ve added real space in our hometown,” President and CEO Joe Carter said.

Its larger facility is headquartered in Fayetteville, Ark.

The original building is 67,000 square feet, while the add-on is nearly 47,000 square feet. Around 40,000 square feet of the new area has been designated for production space. The rest will be used for offices and conference rooms.

The addition was built on land already owned by MARSHALLTOWN. Ground was broken on the site about a year ago.

T-R PHOTO BY SARA JORDAN-HEINTZ
John Christen, director of Iowa operations and engineering, said this work space has tall ceilings that will be ideal for the company’s manufacturing needs.

“We had a tornado in the middle of that and fall rains that were pretty significant that got in the way, but the contractors did a really good job of making up time,” said John Christen, director of Iowa operations and engineering. “Also, we were doubled up in offices and really cramped for space, using some basement offices, and we wanted to add some manufacturing processes that we could not fit in the old building.”

This new work space has tall ceilings — ideal for the company’s production needs.

“It gives us the flexibility to design whatever workcells we need,” Christen said. “We’ve got some new production equipment that gives us a step ahead technology-wise of what we had been using, and that required a much taller ceiling … Some of the same product lines will be moved out to new equipment that’s running in the new facility, but we’re also adding in some new processes that we’ve never done internally.”

Equipment will be moved into the new work space soon, with production to begin there in late July/early August.

Joe Mathern, facilities manager, oversaw the construction efforts of the addition, while Woodruff Construction and Levi Architecture were brought in to make the dream a reality.

“The neighborhood of our Iowa facility had really lost its luster and we thought we could help the community by making a dramatic change. There are a whole host of reasons why we built more space, but clearly, we needed additional space to continue to grow our business,” Carter said.

The Marshalltown location currently has 132 employees.

Marshalltown Trowel changed its name in 2003 to Marshalltown Company, to better reflect the diversity of its product line and today is simply known as MARSHALLTOWN.