(Radio Iowa) – A coalition of local economic development, municipal and business leaders in Perry have worked together for several months to help the city prepare for today’s (Friday) closing of the Tyson plant. Perry City manager Sven Peterson says their efforts until now have focused on helping the workers. “We’re going to be moving into a strategic planning process that will be very action focused to be able to really have a very accountable and mindful process for us to move forward as a community together,” he says. Peterson says they now want to find a way to keep the workers in Perry.

“From closing day on we’re really going to be focusing on the next phase of repair of kind of making sure that we can do as much as we possibly can to replace those jobs that were lost,” he says. Peterson says the plant has some 13-hundred employees and it is estimated that 800 live in Perry and there are 300 kids in the school system with parents at the plant. Peterson says part of the effort is to get another business into town with jobs for those workers.

“We’ve been working pretty heavily with Tyson trying to get them as many contacts as possible that might be interested in the Tyson facility,” Peterson says. “But then we’ve also been really pushing and advertising our industrial park on the east side of town.” He says the industrial park has some opportunities for business. Peterson says they are not going to let the closing get the community down.

“We could kind of take this as a major blow to the community or look at it as an opportunity. And we’ve definitely had our fair share of difficult situations in the past, but in the end we have never backed down from a challenge and you know, we’ve always come out stronger as a result,” Peterson says. While they have know about the closing for months, they now have to deal with the reality of it. He says the emotions vary widely.

“Overall, I think everybody is in a different stage, whether it’s specific employees losing their jobs, other business owners in the community, wondering maybe how it might affect their business. But overall, I think it’s kind of just a, yep, this is happening and we’re going to be moving forward and we’re going to be able to be maintaining ourselves in a strong, resilient manner moving forward,” he says.

Peterson is a Perry native and says they have gotten a lot of help from the state and officials in nearby cities and counties in trying to deal with the closing.