MARQUETTE — The Sands Township Planning Commission on Tuesday unanimously approved a special-use permit for Fraco Concrete Products to relocate its concrete ready-mix facility to an 8-acre site north of Marquette County Road 480.

The new site is on property owned by A. Lindberg & Sons Inc., which provides heavy civil construction services and is an aggregate and stone producer.

Fraco Concrete Products currently is located at 200 Cherry Creek Road in Harvey. Fraco specializes in landscape, stone, tile and flooring products.

During a public hearing on Tuesday, Randall Yelle, director of zoning and planning for Sands Township, said the new facility would reduce traffic in the township. Fraco vehicles now travel on County Road 480 through the crossroads at M-553.

“It’ll cut down on the amount of heavy truck transportation on the corner of 480 and 553,” he said. “And, of course, it’s not going to hurt our taxes either.”

Yelle said the new facility’s water usage would come from the existing aquifer, plus Fraco already has an egress and ingress in place.

Brad Crimmins, a representative for Fraco, said the plan is to build a 7,000-square-foot facility at A. Lindberg & Sons.

“The current plant that we are operating in Harvey is approximately 60 years old,” Crimmins said. “It’s been in Harvey since 1985. It was at another location previously. It’s old. It’s tired. It’s antiquated.

“We’re looking to upgrade to something new that’s more reliable, more efficient and cleaner, quite frankly.”

He agreed that building a new facility would alleviate traffic on roads.

“The biggest input in ready-mix concrete is sand and stone, and right now, every single pound of that is going out of our quarry, through the crossroads to Harvey,” said Crimmins, who noted that amounts to 35,000 to 40,000 tons a year. “We’re talking 1,500 reloads, quad-loads, coming through this intersection between May and November every year.”

With the new facility, Crimmins pointed out that those trucks would be off those roadways.

“Now, it would be replaced with redi-mix traffic, but we’re anticipating 15 to 20 percent of those trucks will head west towards M-35 in Negaunee, and right now we think there’s probably somewhere in that neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent that are coming from Harvey out to the crossroads to head to the mine or to Sawyer,” he said.

Regarding water usage, Crimmins said, “On an average day, all the water that we’re going to need for that day is already self-contained within the storage units on site.”

Yelle said the new plant will have no negative impact.

“I’m not seeing anything but good for the township,” he said.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.