By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

LAMAR, Mo. — Lamar officials said they can relate to Pittsburg, Kan., residents’ shock after Tuesday’s announcement that that city’s largest private employer, Superior Industries, will shut down by December.

“We feel your pain,” said Lynn Calton, Lamar city administrator.

Last year, O’Sullivan Industries, a maker of ready-to-assemble furniture in Lamar and Barton County’s biggest employer, closed its doors and put more than 700 people out of work. On Tuesday, Superior announced plans to close by December, putting more than 600 employees out of work.

Barton County’s unemployment rate went from 6.1 percent after the O’Sullivan plant announced it would close to 12 percent at the end of last year, according to a regional economic report by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released in June. The unemployment rate fell back to 10.6 percent during the first quarter of 2008.

“We’re seeing the effects of (the closure) every day,” Calton said.

Those effects also were felt in Southeast Kansas because many former O’Sullivan employees were Pittsburg-area residents who commuted to Lamar.

In the same way, Superior’s announcement could affect Lamar, and Calton said another empty plant building will make it harder to find an employer to fill the O’Sullivan plant.

“There’s going to be more competition for bringing a new (company) in,” he said. “Now, they have a choice.”

More than a year after the plant closed, Lamar isn’t any closer to finding a business for the vacant, 1.2-million-square-foot plant.

Last fall, Polymer-Wood Technology, of Dallas, proposed using 518,000 square feet of the plant to build garage doors and providing up to 475 jobs. City leaders set up a tax increment financing district to include the former plant and approved an investment company, Structured Equity Advisers, of Newport Beach, Calif., as project developer, with SEA buying the building and leasing it to the garage-door builder.

But O’Sullivan in March terminated the deal with SEA, and, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, alleged that SEA dragged its feet in closing the $4 million deal and should forfeit $1.5 million in earnest money that was part of the purchase agreement. O’Sullivan wants SEA to turn over the earnest money, along with interest and attorney fees incurred in the lawsuit.

Justin Nichols, a Kansas City attorney representing SEA and the company’s manager, Robert Duncan, said Tuesday that the lawsuit is still in the beginning stages.

Calton said Lamar officials have been in contact with officials from SEA and the Texas-based garage-door manufacturer. Both companies expressed their desire and intention to bring the jobs to Lamar if they can get the building, he said.