A factory built with government aid two years ago in Mahnomen, a city of 1,200 on the White Earth Indian Reservation, set its sights on producing the world's first baked stackable potato chip -- a low-fat challenger to oil-fried Pringles and Stax.
Today, the $8.5 million plant sits idle. Mahnomen County remains the poorest place in the state.
Nearly $2 million in federal tax credits, and other help from the state and local governments, haven't produced a single chip, or any of the 39 promised factory jobs.
Instead, the effort degenerated into a drama of distrust, disputes and litigation. Whether taxpayers or the unemployed ever will benefit from the venture is an open question.
"We have to let the smoke clear,"said Arlen Kangas, president of Midwest Minnesota Community Development Corp., a nonprofit based in Detroit Lakes that financed and controls Mahnomen Baked Chips LLC. He still holds out hope for the project.
It's been in jeopardy almost from the beginning because a money dispute erupted between the inventor of a stacked-chip process and a North Dakota businessman in charge of the startup.
Production equipment arrived, but experts disagreed over how to make a baked stackable chip, including whether the plant's 124-foot-long oven is right for the job.
"I am still hopeful for the reservation,"said Dean Johnson, who was Mahnomen's city administrator when the project was conceived and now is tribal development director. "It would be a very good project for us, and employ a lot of people."
