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A new tenant for the former Trim Masters building could mean as many as 150 new jobs for Leitchfield.

Leitchfield officials announced late Monday, May 7, that New York Blower Co. will be opening a facility in the city. The Willowbrook, Ill.-based firm will set up its local operations in the former Trim Masters building.

The company is expected to employ at least 100, and potentially as many as 125 to 150 people within five years of opening.

City officials said a formal announcement by the company and Kentucky leaders is expected in late May or early June, and that no more information would be released at this time.

They did however, after a 40-minute closed door meeting, agree to exempt the company from the city’s ad valorem taxes for five years.

In lieu of abating Leitchfield’s net profit licensing fee and payroll licensing fees for the plant, they approved giving $1,000 for each of the first 100 employees hired within 60 months, to the Leitchfield-Grayson County Industrial Development Corp., which is loaning them $100,000 for the new plant.

New York Blower Co. makes fans and blowers for the industrial and OEM marketplace. It has four subsidiaries — Mechanovent, which makes air-handling equipment; TLT-Babcock, which makes industrial axial fans, centrifugal fans, dampers, and ash-handling systems; Alphair Ventilating Systems, which makes heavy-duty axial fans and centrifugal fans; and MAS Air Systems, which provides customized fans to the OEM and industrial markets, specializing in engineered and high temperature applications.

The company’s roots stretch back to 1889, when brothers J.W. and August Mathis opened a sheet metal shop on the south side of Chicago. In 1894 the Mathis Brothers Co. bought the The New York Blower Co., a fan manufacturer headquartered in New York City whose factory was in Bucyrus, Ohio.

In 1919 the factory was moved to La Porte, Ind. That same year, New York Blower Co. became on the of 12 founding members of the National Association of Fan Manufacturers. In 2001 the company opened a factory in Effingham, Ill. — it’s first one outside La Porte.

The former Trim Masters plant — by then known as Toyota Boshoku America — closed in July 2009, leaving 300 people out of work.