Aberdeen Mayor Mike Levsen says he's hopeful a company will relocate to the plant currently used by Molded Fiber Glass.
The Ohio-based company announced earlier this week it will leave the city in February. The company makes wind turbine blades for General Electric.
MFG officials say their decision is influenced by a shift in market conditions and proposed changes to in tax law with regard to wind energy.
Levsen says those changes are leading to no new orders for blades. More than 400 people will lose their jobs. Levsen says that's about 2 percent of Brown County's workforce.
He says the Aberdeen Development Corporation will still own the facility, and the company will still owe on the lease. Levsen says the plant is one-of-a-kind.
"It's a unique and very large property that is almost all open space inside because it had to be completely open to build those big, very, very long blades that were like 3 football fields long and it's going to be a place that is probably not duplicated anywhere else or in very many other places," Levsen says.
The 325,000 square foot facility was built ten years ago.
Levsen says his main concern is for the people being laid off. He says many of the employees at the plant are first-generation refugees from Southeast Asia who have overcome many challenges in order to make a living in the Aberdeen area.