Siler City chicken plant gets no offers

Pilgrim's Pride plant is set to close; a buyer that showed interest has its own troubles

SILER CITY -- More than two weeks after an Atlanta company told Siler City town leaders it had made a bid to buy a chicken plant that's scheduled to close, plant owners say they still haven't had a formal offer that would make them change their mind.

And the company that town officials said made the offer, IIG Management Inc., is linked to two corporations that are about to be dissolved by the state of Georgia.

Institutional Investors Group is a private equity management company with four funds, according to its Web site. One, "JD's Supercenter Fund," says it will build small "pallet" grocery stores that will sell food for 30 percent less than their competitors. A document on the JD's Supercenter portion of the Web site says the company's president is Jerome D. Hoffman.

One of the men who visited Siler City officials last month was J. David Hoffman, according to former Chatham County Commissioner Tommy Emerson, who met with two IIG executives.

A phone number Emerson provided, which he said was for IIG, matches a phone number on the Web site of Boxcar Stores, a Georgia company. Several entities with names that are variations on "Boxcar Stores" were incorporated by Jerome D. Hoffman between 2001 and 2005 or list him as a corporate officer.

At least two of those companies are about to be dissolved by the Georgia Secretary of State's office for failing to pay registration fees of $120.

Neither ever filed an annual registration with the secretary of state's office, said Latricia Howard, a clerk in the corporations division.

One of the Boxcar companies, Boxcar Stores of Georgia Inc., had two judgments against it in 2003 and 2004 totaling more than $55,000.

And a Jerome D. Hoffman with the same address as two of the Boxcar corporations also has three state tax liens totaling $3,049 against him, according to Georgia court records.

Repeated efforts to reach IIG by telephone have not been successful. The number listed for Boxcar Stores on its Web site goes to an answering machine for "Retail Group," which according to business records is the previous name of IIG Management Inc. Emerson provided a number that he said was a cell phone for J. David Hoffman; a man who answered that number hung up when asked if he was Hoffman.

Boxcar's Web site says it is "rolling out stores across the nation" -- combination gas stations, family restaurants and palletized grocery stores like small versions of warehouse clubs. The company says its infrastructure allows it to "sell the same food as the competition approximately 15% cheaper and to make more profit on most items."

A man who said he is a former construction manager for Boxcar Stores said to his knowledge, the company never built anything.

Randy Meeker said that he worked for Jerome Hoffman for about four months in 2006 and that Hoffman hired him to research sites and meet with contractors. Some of the projects would have been $3 million investments if built, Meeker said. "The ones we were looking into were old Winn-Dixies."

"We had about 20 stores we were trying to get going, but nobody ever gave me the go-ahead," Meeker said. "And one day he told me he didn't need me any more."

What's in it for us?

Siler City's town manager, Joel Brower, said IIG contacted him again last week. On Wednesday, IIG's chief financial officer, Brian Holloway, sent Brower a letter, asking the town for a guarantee that it would be able to provide 800,000 gallons of water a day as soon as it bought the plant and up to 1.6 million gallons a day within six months.

"Given the positive economic impact that our acquisition of the plant would have on the community, we also need to know how that city can make this acquisition financially attractive to IIG in terms of: (1) what we would pay for water; (2) any tax breaks; (3) any grants; or (4) any other financial incentive that the city is prepared to offer to the company," Holloway wrote.

The plant that IIG says it wants to buy is owned by poultry producer Pilgrim's Pride Corp. It employs about 830 people in Siler City, a town of 8,500. The plant is a $1.2 million customer of the town's public utilities department and is a major component of the local economy. It's expected to close by the end of the month.

Pilgrim's Pride two weeks ago issued a statement, which a spokesman reiterated Monday, that several companies have expressed interest in buying the plant but that its plans hadn't changed.

"To date, none of these interested firms has presented us with a formal offer under terms, conditions and in an amount that would cause us to alter the planned closing," said Ray Atkinson, director of corporate communications for Pilgrim's Pride.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)