Tom Smith, president of CertainTeed Roofing, said the efforts of a local economic development group played a key role in the company’s decision to build a new manufacturing and distribution facility in Jonesburg.Smith was here last month to participate in a groundbreaking ceremony for the $100 million, state-of-the-art facility, which could provide as many as 100 new jobs when it is fully operational in 2016.A subsidiary of Saint-Gobain, the world’s largest building products company, CertainTeed and its affiliates have more than 5,700 employees and more than 60 manufacturing facilities throughout the United States and Canada.The company will manufacture and distribute roofing shingles at its Jonesburg plant. Smith, who spoke with The Record Tuesday from the company’s headquarters in Valley Forge, Pa., said the company initially looked at building sites in five different states and eventually narrowed its choice to Missouri and Illinois. He said all of the states offered opportunities, challenges and potential issues but that in the end, a 186-acre tract in Jonesburg was the best fit. Representatives with the Greater Warren County Economic Development Council’s (GWCEDC) helped the company reach that decision, according to Smith.The GWCEDC is a recently formed nonprofit, public-private, multi-community economic development group comprised of area business, civic and government leaders. “It came down to Illinois and Missouri and both states made strong pitches and offered us incentives to locate there,” Smith explained. “But it wasn’t just throwing money at us. In fact, there were deeper incentives in another state. “What swayed us was the willingness of people to work with us on a variety of business issues like permitting and other things like that. There was real cooperation in Missouri from everyone on the local, county and state levels. We were impressed with that.”Smith said that cooperation among various political subdivisions was going to be an essential element if the company was going to choose the Jonesburg site because the 186-acre parcel at Scudder Ranch Road and the Interstate 70 South Service Road straddled two counties. “That was unusual and made the Missouri site more complicated,” Smith said. “I have high praise for Josh (Beck). Josh is a great guy and really knows his stuff. But we also were really impressed with the way everyone from the mayors, to the commissioners from both counties and the people from the state pulled together to make this happen.” Beck is an economic development consultant retained by the GWCEDC. Smith said that Beck and his company’s consultant, Leslie Rubin, worked together over a period of months to quantify all of the local and state incentives so that his company could make a learned decision. Smith said that while the mix of short- and long-term incentives that Missouri offered were important, other factors influenced the company’s decision. “Short-term incentives get a project rolling, but there has to be other long-term reasons to invest that much money in a given location,” Smith said. “We are making a 50-year decision and clearly economic incentives don’t go that long. We have to be confident we are making the right decision,” Smith said that Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon proved to be a source of confidence during the decision-making process.“The governor is a great salesperson for your state,” Smith noted. “Like many businessmen, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, but I have to say he was another one of the reasons we came here. “I was extremely impressed with the way he has managed the state’s finances. You don’t have to worry about this state going bankrupt or whether it’s going to balance its budget. Frankly, we weren’t interested in locating in a state with economic issues. We don’t want to be in a situation where things are great today but we had to worry where are they going to be 10 or 15 or 20 years down the road. The governor gave us confidence that Missouri was in economic good shape,” Smith explained.Rubin, who is based out of Indianapolis, also was impressed with the cooperation from the GWCEDC. She said that her firm has worked with all kinds of different economic development groups across the country and there is no question that the caliber of professionalism on the local level can make a difference in how a given locality is perceived. “I’ve worked in places where the various agencies and groups, for whatever reason, don’t work with each other. That wasn’t the case here. They (GWCEDC) were extremely helpful, responsive and, more than anything, they utilized a team approach. They were problem solvers. There were plenty of opportunities where things could have gone off course but they pulled it together. I would absolutely do another project with them,” Rubin said.Smith said he expects the Jonesburg distribution center to be up and running by this time next year or sooner. He said the manufacturing facility wouldn’t be completed until 2015. CertainTeed notified its St. Louis customers that it was opening a new distribution center in St. Louis Sept. 3 which Smith said would be utilized until the Jonesburg site was operational.Smith said the economy is starting to show signs of recovery and that the long-term prospects for CertainTeed were good.“We are seeing a consistent, albeit tentative, recovery,” he said. “But things are trending generally positive for us. The United States is still growing and there is still the desire for people to own their own homes which is good for our industry.”Smith said he felt the prospects for the Warren County economy also were strong and CertainTeed’s construction project should give the area a boost.“People are going to start seeing a lot of economic activity in the area as a result of our project. We are going to have a couple hundred people working on it and they will be eating at the Flying J and Brewskies and shopping at local stores,” Smith remarked. “We are very happy to be here,” Smith added. “When we came out for the groundbreaking we had a chance to meet some of the folks who were instrumental in helping us get here and they were just fantastic people. We want to be part of this community. We want to do good works in this community and provide for the community by returning some of our good fortune back to the community.”CertainTeed President Tom SmithCertainTeed President Praises Local Effort