This article originally ran 7-18-06 in The Coffey County Republican

Builder Has Plans

Mark Petterson/The Republican KanBuild, Inc. will open a showroom and prototype workspace in August at the former Dream Homes building at I-35 and Fauna Road in Lebo. If company growth continues as expected, the company will begin building homes at the location, bringing as many as 75 jobs to the county.

Lebo KanBuild operation to begin in August
Jeremy Gaston
Reporter

LEBO--KanBuild, Inc. will soon be putting the former Dream Homes site in Lebo to use. The companies initial operations, which include a showroom and work space, will mean a handful of local jobs at first and the possibility for dozens more.

"We will have the retail housing center there and we may open up the painting operation," KanBuild CEO Jon Samples stated. "We have some suppliers that want us to paint for them. We are also definitely going to use that facility for prototyping."

The long-term plans rest on several more factors, but the current growth of the company projects big things for the Lebo plant.

The company started out of a crumbling start up by Kansas City businessmen in 1985. The Osage City plant was taken over by its first employee, Samples, and local investors on Feb. 12, 1989, as KanBuild. Samples ran KanBuild for 12 years until the company was bought out by a larger corporation. The company ran the business for four years until they announced the closure of the Osage City plant in August 2005.

Samples returned with local investors to save the plant, again, and rebuild KanBuild.
"The first time we were here, from 1989 to 2001, we went from being nothing to being the largest modular producer west of the Mississippi," Samples commented. "I don't know if were going to achieve that, again, but were certainly busy.

Samples stated KanBuild has a work backlog of 90 days after being in business just six months, while most of their competitors are backlogged less than 30 days.

"We're increasing our production as fast as we can while maintaining our level of quality at Osage City," Samples continued. "Since we opened in January, we hired 35 people, and were trying to hire another 25. It takes 'X' amount of man hours to build a house, and were currently working our employees 54 hours a week."

"We're blessed right now," he added. "It goes a long way to say that that KanBuild still has credibility of being a very good house on the market."

The company's current focus is to fill out the Osage City plant, which is operating at around 50 percent production currently. When capacity is reached, production will expand to the Lebo site. Those projections rest on the stability of the economy and the housing market, and the ability of the company to fill the Osage plant.

"We have plans for Lebo to be a production facility again, but were going to get our facility in Osage City up to capacity before we expand there," Samples added.

KanBuild has plenty of plans for the Lebo site in the meantime. Preliminary work at the Lebo site will require several workers, a pre-designated plant manager and several new employees.

"In the next 60 days, we'll have five to ten people down there," Samples stated. "Those jobs will be permanent jobs. If we don't have anything for them in Lebo, then we'll utilize them elsewhere. It may be a long period of time if we come up with more things that we want to build outside of our current production line. We have a couple of things that we believe will revolutionize the market. That doesn't really blend into the production line when you're trying to increase productivity."

"Right now, were putting in a retail housing center to show homes off of the model we have under construction there now," he continued. "We anticipate having that open between Aug. 1 and 15. That model will direct buyers to our Ottawa, Topeka and other dealers throughout the state of Kansas. We have a factory retail center in Wichita. They would be doing the construction in areas that we service from there."

KanBuild entered a one-year lease on the former Dream Homes building at I-35 and Fauna Road earlier this year with annual renewal options and an option to buy. The company also has been talking with city and county officials for several months.

"We're still working with Coffey County to put together a package for when we do kick off," Samples noted. "The county commission has been very open to discussion. I think we'll be able to put together something that will work well for the county as well as KanBuild."

Coffey County Economic Development Director Jon Hotaling has been working closely with Samples and KanBuild.

"It'll probably be six to twelve months before we know how far he's going to go with it," Hotaling noted. "If he can get the plant and the sales up, then he'd come over and start building homes in Lebo."

"We anticipate when we get the Osage plant to the level that we want, then we'll have 50 to 75 employees in permanent positions at Lebo," Samples added.

Samples anticipates much of the prospective work force will come from the area.

"We're going to hire them from wherever they come from," he stated. "In Osage, 50 percent of our employees are within the Osage City zip code and the balance comes from six counties. I imagine it's probably going to be somewhat similar to that situation."

KanBuild, Inc. is a 21-year-old certified home builder and member of the Topeka Home Builders Association and the National Home Builders Association. Kan-Build constructs residential homes and other multi-family dwellings; commercial buildings such as banks, post offices and medical clinics; and custom buildings. The company sells through nearly 40 builders to a 10-state area.