From Paperboard To Green Jobs, Mill Gets Makeover

An Illinois investment company that bought an old container manufacturer west of Missoula is hoping to turn the 3,200-acre site along the Clark Fork River into a magnet for green jobs.

Green Investment Group Inc. has hired about 30 people including former employees to staff the old Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. site in Frenchtown to shape up the facility for prospective tenants.

Green has purchased seven Smurfit-Stone sites in the U.S. and Canada, all with an eye on redeveloping them.

Tom Dauenhauer, a former Smurfit employee who is Green's Frenchtown site manager, says one of the first symbolic acts new employees did was remove hundreds of hardhats hanging along a mill fence.

Dauenhauer says those hats represented lost jobs and negativity that accompanied the mill's 2010 closure.

Associated Press