The E. & .J. Gallo plant didn’t just end up in Chester County: there was a lot of work behind the scenes before that happened. Years of it, in fact.
At the annual Chester Development Association banquet, J.M. Mullis development group Sr. VP and partner Denise Mullis gave an “inside baseball” look at how the wine and spirits maker ended up choosing Chester County.
Mullis told the assembled audience of business and community leaders, “I want to explain a bit to you about how this happened, because I think you really need to understand, Gallo didn’t just end up here. This is a competitive process, a very competitive process.
“We (JM Mullis) got a phone call over the summer during the pandemic; we really weren’t supposed to be signing new contracts and new clients during that time, but business actually remained strong.
“So w get this phone call, someone from E. & J. Gallo wants to talk to us.” She laughed and added, “I can’t tell you how much we really enjoy wine, so we were pretty excited. I mean, we couldn’t really imagine, I mean, we knew they make wine in California…we were really excited to have this conversation with some officials from Gallo — they wanted a new East Coast beachhead operation. Sign us up: we were ready (to go to work).
“This was a three-state competitive process. We started and we had a dozen or more sites to look at across the three states. We needed access to ports and dual rail access, so the sites were being eliminated rather quickly.
“We also knew that we needed access to talent: this was very important to Gallo We moved through the process and basically, we got down to two states vying against one another.
“We were in South Carolina, and we looked at several different locations, but Chester really stood out to me. When I started doing my labor analysis and looking at drive times and looking at these distances, sometimes you might have a site where half of that radius you are looking at falls off (into the ocean), so you’re only recruiting from a certain section, but you guys are set in the most perfect spot,” she said.
The area looked good, Denise Mullis said.
“It was just kind of this extension of what was going on in Charlotte. I don’t think this room was full (of representatives of new industries like it is now)…but there was such a need for good, quality jobs. We went out to the E. & J. Gallo’s Modesto, Calif. location and we met with all of the top leadership, including, most impressively, Ernest Gallo. We knew the quality of this company, and we got to know the quality of the Chester County community through meeting with all of the public leadership, public officials and private leadership. Every time we called a meeting, everybody we needed was in that room, to have the hard discussions and the long discussions. You felt the absolute desire (of the county) to have this company locate here,” she said.
She said the initial discussions began in the summer of 2020, and the announcement was made in June of 2021.
“I have never seen a company with better employee engagement…they are doing great right now, and a majority of the reason we ended up here was the access to talent and the enthusiasm from the community to have the project here,” she said.
Mike Mullis, President and CEO of JM Mullis added, during the decision process, “We were in Columbia, talking about it, looking at the map…I had the site picked in my mind, the location…Denise said ‘Chester’. I said ‘won’t work; not enough workforce’. Next week we called Duke Energy, said ‘we need a helicopter’…we didn’t get one helicopter, we got two…they must have come six times to show us the area. I’m in the front seat, Denise is right behind me, and the Gallo team is there. Denise pointed out the housing that was developing, and she said ‘I think the people are here.’
Denise added, “the perspective you get from up above (the county is hard to drive around). We did a lot of site visits; people didn’t even know we were in the area. We did drive around, because there are certain things we want to see and touch and feel, but the perspective of the county from the air, solidified the decision,” Denise Mullis said.
Two other items that were critical to the decision were the cooperation Gall and J.M. Mullis received from the Close family (“They were absolutely determined to make that deal,” Mike Mullis said, “in every aspect. I’ve never seen a closer working relationship with a property owner, than we had with Derick Close and his team.”)
“The other thing, we permitted this site quicker than any site of its size and type had ever been permitted; it took about six months. The Army Corps of Engineers put us as a matter of record in the top 50 in the United States…it was all those pieces that were working together…DHEC, the state Department of Commerce, Duke Energy, Alliance Engineers, and our attorney…everybody worked really hard to make this happen. There were so many challenges of every type you can imagine (notwithstanding the fact we had to change some state legislation to get it done.) That was an entertaining experience, in every aspect,” Mike Mullis said.
“That project, and you have a lot of great projects in this county and this state, that project is going to be one of the best in this state 50 years from now, and you all will be very proud of it,” Mike Mullis concluded.
