ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
A new industrial project took a step forward thanks to action from the Liberal City Commission Tuesday evening.
After electing Jose Lara and Matt Landry as mayor and vice mayor, respectively, the commission began its new business with further discussion of a purchase and sale agreement with Air Products.
“As you all remember, this was presented at the commission’s Dec. 24, 2024 meeting, and city staff, in conjunction with extensive efforts by Eli Svaty at Seward County Development Corp, have been working for the better part of a year on an agreement between the City of Liberal and Air Products,” Interim City Manager Scarlette Diseker said. “The official Letter of Intent was signed by both parties on Sept. 16, 2024 for two lots at the Airport Industrial Park. A site visit and environmental assessment took place Oct. 1, 2024, which then led to the purchase and sale agreement that was presented to the commission. At that time, the commission voted unanimously in favor of the agreement. Upon further review, it was discovered there was a misprint of the parcel numbers in the original contract, so city staff and Air Products met recently to discuss this discrepancy and update the document. Once approved by the Commission, the land sale and project is still contingent upon final FAA approval.”
Liberal Airport Manager Brian Fornwalt then went into more detail about the FAA approval needed.
“What’s happened recently is another airport somewhere else sold some land they weren’t supposed to, so the FAA is making it a little more difficult for airports to sell land,” Fornwalt said. “With that, they added in some extra requirements and other things that need to be done. They’re making us send them a letter, which will go to the main office in Washington, DC, and that letter will sit at that headquarters for 30 days. Once that is done, it will be reviewed and then sent back to the central office in Kansas City, and then to the federal register for 30 days. Then, once all of that is done, we’ll get the deed to release the land, and it’ll go from there. We do have everything ready to go, we just need the letter signed, and it’ll go out within the next day or two to the FAA.”
After some more discussion, Air Products representative Matthew Greer spoke to the commission.
“Air Products is a quite large corporation with $12.1 billion in sales just last year, and the company has 23,000 employees worldwide,” Greer said. “We currently operate in more than 50 countries, and we’ve created more than $65 billion in market capital. Air Products has been in business since the 1940s, so it’s been in business for more than 80 years serving more than 250,000 customers. Globally, we have more than 1,800 miles of industrial gas pipelines, more than 750 production facilities, and more than 30 industries served. That includes everything from pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, and a multitude of other industries, and that’s domestically and internationally. Our goal is for Air Products to be the safest, most diverse, most profitable industrial gas company in the world while providing excellent service to our customers.”
Safety is also a top priority for the company, Greer said.
“We consider maintaining a safe workplace as our fundamental and moral responsibility,” Greer said. “We take the approach that all accidents are preventable and the only acceptable number of accidents is zero, and we strive to that every single day. We like to say every one of our employees goes home in better condition than when they came in for the day. Another one of our higher purposes is bringing people together to collaborate and innovate solutions to the world’s most significant energy and environmental sustainability challenges. In terms of our growth strategy, I like to say we have two pillars right now. Decarbonization creates opportunity, and clean hydrogen is a trillion-dollar market opportunity. Core industrial gas is our business, and that includes liquid helium, liquid hydrogen, liquid argon, etc., and those form the basis of our core gas business. Our other pillar is from blue and green hydrogen, so we’re really trying to be the first movers in the hydrogen market and put the technology out there to help really drive change on a global scale. We like to work along the mantra of ‘Think Global, Act Local’ because as I said earlier, we are a rather large corporation, but we want to be involved in the communities where we’re set up.”
Greer then went into more detail about the company’s reach.
“43 percent of our sales are in the U.S. and Canada, 26 percent of our sales are in Europe, Middle East and India and Africa, 16 percent in China, 11 percent in other parts of Asia, and 4 percent in Latin America,” Greer said. “And all of that roughly equates to where we see the hydrogen mobility market really taking off as well as our industrial core gas. With our Kansas presence, we have multiple facilities. We have a liquid helium plant about 15 miles northeast of Liberal that’s been operating since approximately 2008, and it’s one of the world’s largest helium purification and liquefaction plants. We also have a helium distribution terminal just south of Liberal, and those tanks are used in many ways.”
Greer then talked to the commission regarding Gardner Cryogenics before concluding his presentation, after which the commission unanimously voted to approve the updated purchase and sale agreement.
In other new business, the commission also approved Ordinance No. 4628 concerning rezoning 441 S. Washington from C-2 (Commercial) to R-3 (Multiple Family) and also approved a contract with Adventure Solutions for the Design and construction of a custom Ruby Slipper Slide to be set up at the Tourist Information Center. The commission also approved the Financial Policies & Procedures Manual for the 2025 fiscal year and unanimously voted to designate Sunflower Bank as the official city depository and the Leader & Times as the official city newspaper.
To conclude the meeting the commission revisited discussion of Larry Street and Hickory Street funding.
“As you’ll recall, at the commission’s Sept. 24, 2024 meeting, the commission approved Ordinance No. 4619, establishing the RHID and adopting the plan for the development of housing on Larry Street and Hickory Street by G&G Developments. As was approved at the commission’s Nov. 26, 2024 meeting, the City of Liberal was not listed as the developer,” Diseker said. “On that night, the commission discussed the option of setting up this housing addition similarly to the Chance and Ortuño developments, which are currently in progress on the north and south sides of town. The funds for the housing developments are drawn from Fund 260 1-cent Sales Tax (Streets, Drainage, Capital Improvements). This fund currently has a cash balance of $6,847,166.08, of which around $1.2M is still earmarked for ongoing housing projects. As previously said, Fund 260 tends to receipt around $250K in sales tax per month, and my professional opinion is that we always need to keep a $2.5M reserve in the fund for routine project maintenance and any type of catastrophic situation. This developer has been committed to Liberal for a long time and has wanted to put this housing in, and I think that loyalty deserves to be discussed.”
After some questions, the commission concluded the discussion, and the matter will come up for a vote at the commission’s next meeting Jan. 28.
