Jackson grants permit for Link Electronics business

After a public hearing yielded no opposition, the Jackson board of aldermen granted Link Electronics a special-use permit for its operation of a small assembly business near uptown Jackson at Monday night's meeting.

Link Electronics has designed and produced electronic components for media broadcasting since 1989 and moved to Jackson from Cape Girardeau earlier this year. Vice president of operations Jim Timberlake said Link Electronics has been operating out of the current location under provisional authorization since February.

Because the area around its new address on North High street is a designated C-2 general commercial district, and Link Electronics is a manufacturer, it needed the special-use permit to continue doing business.

Timberlake said the eight-person business would be described more accurately as assemblers than manufacturers.

"We buy parts from outside vendors and bring them in and then assemble and ship our products to customers all over the world," he said. "I don't foresee any problems with what we're doing here, since we're not a hard manufacturer. We assemble products, but they're not products we build."

He pointed out Link Electronics takes care to ensure its operations are environmentally safe.

"We don't have any harsh chemicals that we use on the premises," he said. "The flush we use is organically safe. We wash our circuit boards with hot water, which means it's organically safe to go through the sewer system."

Timberlake said the special permit requirement was needed just to be on the safe side, since nobody in the past few months has expressed anything that would suggest Link Electronics was a disturbance of any kind.

"Nobody's complained to us or about us that I know of," he explained. "And all the meetings that I've gone to, nobody's stood up and said, 'Hey we don't want your business in town.'"

tgraef@semissourian.com

388-3627

Pertinent address: 2360 N. High Street, Jackson, MO