TYLERTOWN — Negotiations are continuing between Walthall County’s governments and Brigade Manufacturing.
Board of Supervisors attorney Conrad Mord said Monday that Brigade had brought another offer to the table, and the supervisors and the Tylertown Board of Aldermen would consider it and respond soon.
The governments, represented by Mord and town board attorney Joseph Stinson, can accept or reject the offer by Brigade, or make a counter-offer.
Both boards heard updates on the case in executive session, the supervisors on Monday and the aldermen on Tuesday.
Tylertown, as the acting manager of the joint property that Brigade is leasing, filed suit in September seeking about $150,000 in back rent and the eviction of the company from the property. The county concurred in the suit’s filing.
Though Brigade was named in a previous lawsuit filed in circuit court in 2012 and then refiled in federal court in 2013 by the Marion County Economic Development District and Marion County Board of Supervisors, plant manager Kenneth Barber told the Tylertown Times this week that Brigade was never affiliated with the other companies named as defendants.
The Marion EDD sued Brigade as a successor to RutterRex and Wellstone Apparel as leaseholder on a Columbia facility.
Barber said Wellstone was bought by American Apparel and closed its operations in both Columbia and Tylertown in 2009.
Brigade, he said, was formed separately by the Davenport family of Tullahoma, Tenn., after the Wellstone sale. The company bought some of Wellstone’s equipment and moved it to its current location in Tylertown.
A settlement brought the Marion County suit to a close in 2014, when U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett dismissed it.
The Times reported that the plant, with 107 workers, has a payroll of about $1.3 million and just received a new contract for military uniform pieces.
Plans are in the works to set up a new production line, Barber told the Times.
