Ribbon-cutting at Co-Mo

Co-Mo Electric Cooperative will officially open the doors to its new Operations Center with a ribbon-cutting ceremony prior to its Annual Meeting May 23.

The Tipton Chamber of Commerce is hosting the ribbon-cutting, which begins at 3 p.m. at the Operations Center at 448 Richards Blvd., on the south edge of Tipton.

Co-Mo purchased the Operations Center from Nordyne after the company consolidated operations inBoonville in 2011. The cooperative renovated the facility to house its engineering and operations employees, line trucks and warehouse.

Though the ribbon-cutting will officially open the Operations Center, the facility has already proved its value to the cooperative and its members. Employees have been using the facility since January.

"If we hadn't had this building during the big snowstorm in late February, the restoration effort would have gone much more slowly," said Ken Johnson, the cooperative's CEO and general manager. "We were able to keep the vehicles of all those crews that came to help us inside so they could just start them every morning and get back to work without having to warm them up. We had a place where we could feed everyone. There were rooms big enough for our folks to meet and get organized every day and evening. It was fantastic."

The cooperative purchased the vacant factory in March 2012 as part of a renovation project that includes its Tipton headquarters building to allow for room for its Co-Mo Connect fiber-to-the-home operation.

"We've been looking at many different options for a number of years now, even before we moved into fiber," Johnson said. "We recognized we were reaching the point where we had no more room, and the fiber business really pushed us over the edge. The board decided this renovation project was the most economical way to address those issues."

Johnson invited Co-Mo members to attend the ribbon-cutting, which is prior to the 4:30 p.m. start of Annual Meeting events.

"That's another great thing about this building," he said. "It allowed us to move our Annual Meeting in-house instead of having it divided among two locations at the Knights ofColumbus Hall and Tipton High School. We're hoping our members find this much more convenient."