HAMMOND — The city started out as State Line Slaughterhouse, a company town for one of the nation's Big Four 19th-century meat packers, after Detroit industrialist George H. Hammond built a plant on the banks of the Grand Calumet River right on the state line.
Now, more than a century after the slaughterhouse burned down, a massive meat-packing operation is going up just a few blocks away at the site of the former Queen Ann Candy factory at 628 Hoffman St.
Meats by Linz, which supplies beef to some of the country's top steakhouses and whose brand restaurants advertise as a mark of quality, is moving from its longtime headquarters a few blocks west of the Indiana/Illinois state line in Calumet City to Hammond. It plans to invest $38 million in the 120,000-square-foot plant.
It will bring 300 jobs to the city and eventually hire about 50 more employees, Hammond Director of Economic Development Anne Anderson said.
The relocation project has been about a decade in the making.
"The plans for Meats by Linz were much bigger than a six-acre site," developer Rob Ferrino said. "So we went next door to Screw Conveyor, where we were able to purchase four-and-a-half acres. It still wasn't enough so we went to the sanitary district beyond the trees and got another four-and-a-half acres to get an assemblage of 14-and-a-half-acres for the entire site."
It will be a state-of-the-art processing facility with cutting operations and freezers backed up by generators so the meat never goes bad in the event of a power outage.
"Every aspect was thought out," Ferrino said. "My favorite aspect is the dry-age room. Literally, it's the largest dry-age room in the country and it has miles of tomahawks steak lined up. I love walking into that room. If you ever want to find me, that's where I'll be."
Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said it was part of $1 billion in new private-sector investment in Hammond during his tenure.
"We've been working on this project for a decade," McDermott said. "Obviously, we see a lot of businesses moving from Illinois to Indiana. We've been very happy. We're obviously the first stop, in Hammond.
"I like to think we cut through the red tape and make projects like this happen. We're happy to see this come to fruition. ... This city is really killing it right now. It makes me happy as mayor to see that. ... A strong Hammond is good for the Region."
Hammond Council Member Pedro "Pete" Torres said it was a rebirth of Hammond's historic role as a slaughterhouse town.
The G.H. Hammond Co. was considered one of the Big Four meat packers, along with Armour, Swift and Morris, supplying fresh beef to much of the East Coast before it burned down in the early 1900s.
"It's only right that a meat-packing plant or processing plant be built right here, just two blocks east of that area," he said. "This site has been vacant for a long time. I was hoping the redevelopment commission would pick a business that would complement neighbors like the tortilla place right next door.
"Tortillas Nuevo Leon is right next door. What could be better than a meat processing plant and tortilla plant right next door? You can't have a good taco without good meat and good tortillas. So it's going to fit in just fine."
Founded in 1963, Meats by Linz started out supplying local restaurants like Glenwood Oaks in Glenwood. It expanded to supply white-tablecloth steakhouses like Ditka's Restaurant in Chicago and St. Elmo's Steakhouse in Indianapolis. The Linz family has deep Hammond roots, CEO Fred Linz said.
"My grandfather worked in the Goldblatt's building in the meat department in the 1930s. He was in his 20s. That was the start of his vision of opening up a butcher shop," he said. "My grandmother worked the majority of her adult life right here at Queen Ann at this site. It's kind of ironic after 10 years of looking for a site we end up with a site that ties everything back to us."
The company, which also has a ranch near Crown Point, started out as a butcher shop but now has its own breed of Angus cattle and is international in scope.
"We service throughout the country and abroad, through Asia, the Caribbean and Mexico as well," Linz said. "I've always had the saying, 'We don't want to be the biggest, we just want to be the best.' But I've found as we try to be the best, we get bigger and bigger."
A grand opening is slated to take place in fall or winter of next year.
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