Gulf Coast Spinning Company's abandoned Bunkie site for sale

In June 2015, site work for the Bunkie Industrial Park’s first tenant, Gulf Coast Spinning, stopped. The cotton yarn spinning plant that was going to bring 300 jobs to the Bunkie area called it quits and left town.

Gulf Coast Spinning still owns the 43.471 acres where the plant was supposed to be located. Diversified Lands, the mortgage holder of that tract, is foreclosing on a $2 million note.

The property will be auctioned at a Sheriff’s Sale at 10 a.m. on Feb. 19 at the Sheriff’s Tax Office on the 2nd Floor of the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse in Marksville.

A minimum bid will be 2/3 of the average of two appraisals of the property. Those appraisals will be completed closer to the sale date, an APSO Tax Office spokesperson said.

GULF COAST/CLECO

There is also an ongoing suit between Gulf Coast and Cleco over the aborted industrial development project.

Gulf Coast alleges Cleco failed “to fully perform an alleged verbal agreement to lend or otherwise fund its startup costs to the extent of $6.5 million,” Cleco noted in a December 2016 report. That report added the utility company “believes the allegations of the petition are contradicted by the written documents executed by Gulf Coast and are otherwise without merit and that it (Cleco) has substantial meritorious defenses to the claims alleged by Gulf Coast.”

Cleco spent $11 million to entice Gulf Coast to locate in Bunkie, where the company began in 1906 with a steam-driven generating plant.

The utility company, now headquartered in Pineville, ran an electrical line from its power plant in St. Landry, about 10 miles from the industrial park, and constructed a substation in Eola.

Since Gulf Coast left, Cleco purchased the other 97 acres of the industrial park last year.

Cleco paid approximately $1 million for the 97 acres while Gulf Coast paid twice as much for a tract less than half that size.

A Cleco spokesperson said issues involving Gulf Coast Spinning are still part of “pending litigation” and company officials cannot make comments. Nothing has changed in the past few years, the spokesman said.

When Cleco purchased the property last March, its Economic Development Manager Rick Ransom said the company is “in the electricity business, not the real estate business.”

He said Cleco wants to attract a large electricity-using tenant to the industrial park and is not interested in selling the property to make a profit.

Meanwhile, Gulf Coast CEO Dan Feibus’ Vidalia Denim plant -- a re-invented version of the Gulf Coast Spinning project that is located in the former Fruit of the Loom plant in Vidalia -- has still not begun production two years after the company announced plans to produce denim for American blue jeans -- including Wrangler brand.

The plant was originally projected to begin making denim in early 2019. The start-of-production date has been moved several times since then.

Feibus also did not return messages requesting comment on the Cleco suit, the upcoming foreclosure sale and the status of his Vidalia Denim plant.