Port Authority Grant Spurs Move by Aunt Minnie’s Back to Central City
By Fletcher Word
The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority’s Board of Directors announced last week that they have granted Organized Neighbors Yielding eXcellence (ONYX), Inc, a community development corporation, $35,000 for the redevelopment of a vacant lot in adjacent sites along City Park Avenue.
The project will enable Aunt Minnie’s Food Service, owned and operated by two African-American women, to move back into Toledo from their current Perrysburg address.
The Community Economic Development Initiative grant and loan program is funded with proceeds from property tax levies for CDC’s and eligible neighborhood-based organizations.
The project to move Aunt Minnie’s back into the central city has been named AMONYX – Aunt Minnie’s and ONYX – according to Jimmie Gaines, executive director of ONYX. The development will encompass nine acres of land at 215-219 City Park. There are three structures that will have to be razed on the property.
“This is an unusual conversation,” said Gaines last week, “to get a business from the suburbs into the city.”
Not that the project is home free. The $35,000 is simply the start of what will be required for ONYX to turn the lots on City Park into a viable frozen food manufacturing plant. Ultimately the project will cost about $5 million, according to Claudia Sebree-Pressley, one of the owners of Aunt Minnie’s.
Aunt Minnie’s is the brainchild of Minnie Sebree and her daughter, Sebree-Pressley. The pair opened a restaurant about 15 years ago and, after five years, closed that operation in order to focus on frozen food distribution.
Today, Aunt Minnie’s is growing from a local frozen food operation to a national one. The company’s products grace the shelves of about a dozen area stores and recently the company has moved into the American South and Southwest.
The company is located on Williams Road in Perrysburg and employs about 15 people. The business plan for the City Park location, which may take up to two years to complete, calls for annual revenues to start at $2 million and employment for 45 people on one shift. From there, according to Sebree-Pressley, the company will be able to grow into multiple shifts, as the demand increases for the Aunt Minnie’s products.
Aunt Minnie produces four frozen food items – cornbread stuffing, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler and blackberry cobbler.
“This is a group that needs to expand and come home,” said Lucas County Board of Commissioners’ President Tina Skeldon Wozniak. “This is a quality product and they will create jobs in this neighborhood. And the Port Authority is doing what they said they would do.”
In fact, most of the employees of Aunt Minnie’s live in the City Park neighborhood and currently travel to Perrysburg on a daily basis.
The plan to move the company into the City of Toledo is one that is dear to the heart of ONYX’s chairman of the board of directors, WilliAnn Moore, who is close to the Sebree family, as she noted at last week’s press conference.
Moore’s efforts to bring Aunt Minnie’s home were not lost on the observers at least week’s announcements. “When WilliAnn has a vision, I’ve learned to go along with it,” said Toledo Councilman Michael Ashford, who represents District 4 where the new plant will be located. “This is a great vision.”
