ShawneeDispatch.com

Holliday Sand & Gravel, which has plants in Shawnee, Edwardsville and Bonner Springs, was purchased Friday by an Overland Park-based cement company.

Ash Grove Cement Co. bought Holliday, which has six other plants and about 130 employees in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, for an undisclosed amount.

A Saturday vote by the Operating Engineers Local 101 approved a new contract with Ash Grove, said Kent Sunderland, vice chairman of the board for Ash Grove.

Neither Sunderland nor any union official would comment on the conditions of the contract.

Sunderland said "very few jobs" would be eliminated at Holliday, though he said "I don't know exactly how many."

The reclamation agreements with Shawnee and Bonner Springs for the land occupied by Holliday's dredging plants will remain in effect, Sunderland said.

The agreements require the company to place money in a bond to cover the cost of repairing the dredging plants' effects on the land and to turn over the land to the respective cities after operations have ceased.

The land being dredged in Bonner Springs is in the Bonner Springs Industrial Park south of the Kansas River, and is a small portion of the total dredging site, which mostly consists of Shawnee land. John Helin, Bonner Springs city manager, said Bonner Springs's portion of the land probably would revert back to the city's control in about five or six years.

On that land, the two cities will have a joint riverfront park, and the dredging process has created a lake.

Holliday has placed money in bonds to cover the cost of reclaiming the land its Shawnee plants occupies, said Vicki Charlesworth, assistant city manager for Shawnee, and Helin said the same was true for the Bonner Springs location.

Holliday's other Shawnee dredging location is on 480 acres west of Kansas Highway 7 and south of 47th Street next to the river. Dredging operations were planned to create a 146-acre lake at that site, while at the same time bringing 168 acres of land to the east out of the floodplain for a business park and giving the city 116 acres of parkland.

Paul Chaffee, city planning director, said he didn't think the sale of the company would affect the plans for a business park.

Edwardsville City Administrator Mike Webb said he didn't know the details of the city's agreement with Holliday.

The Ash Grove press release called the purchase of Holliday a "strategic acquisition" and Ash Grove CEO Charlie Sunderland said the deal would benefit his company.

"This acquisition complements Ash Grove's existing operations and will strengthen our market position as the leading supplier of cement and other building and construction materials in the Midwest," CEO Charlie Sunderland said in the release.

The press release says Holliday will keep its name and headquarters.

Ash Grove produces 9 million tons of cement each year at its nine cement plants throughout the country.

Caroline Boyer contributed to this story.