DIXFIELD — Irving Forest Products Sawmill is proposing to build four, four-bedroom mobile homes in hopes of attracting employees to fill an average of 20 vacancies a week and make the mill the largest producer of eastern white pine in North America.

“We’re the only mill with Irving that doesn’t have employee housing,” mill manager Randy Chicoine told the Planning Board at its meeting Dec. 14.

Irving operates mills in Maine and Canada, basing its headquarters in New Brunswick.

Chicoine said the company is planning to install four, four-bedroom mobile homes, each with two baths and a common-area kitchen. The high-quality units would be built by Irving in Canada.

He said they would be put on the company lot on Pine Street and be isolated from the town and behind the tree line. The company plans to tie in sewer and water lines to existing plumbing.

“We’ve met with the fire marshal,” Chicoine said, “and the structures will be built to be room-and-lodging compliant, with fire detection systems, sprinkler systems, and 10 percent of the units have to be ADA compliant. We will have four trailers on concrete pads, and one will be completely ADA compliant, with a ramp, widened doors, etc. The homes will be maintained to Irving standards and we’ll take care of the grounds.”

Chicoine said Irving has done a similar project at its Ashland mill to help support employees there.

“That mill has U.S. citizens that are not from the area. We have migrant employees. Anyone who’s going to work here is always going to be legal,” he said.

The company’s preference is to hire qualified local people first and foremost, he said.

“Is it a turnover issue you’re dealing with, or is it a recruitment issue?” Planning Board Chairman Ken Hinkley asked.

Chicoine said he’s been at the mill at 24 Hall Hill Road for six years and “it’s been a struggle since I’ve been here to fill positions … We’ve had 83 new employees over the past year. We’ve got to train those folks … We have folks that don’t even last a week.”

Chicoine said they usually average about 20 openings a week. The mill has capacity to be the largest producer of eastern white pine in North America, and at full capacity has 270 employees.

“It’s a tremendous burden on our staff, on training,” Chicoine said. “Quite frankly, it impacts your safety. When you get turnover constantly, it’s difficult to have a safe operation. So we have to do something different … it’s impacting our business.”

“It’s not just an issue with the sawmill,” he said. “It’s an issue everywhere. With us, we have a really good core group that’s pretty stable and they’re really good. What we struggle with is those bottom 15 to 20 positions. A lot of those positions are manual labor and not as many people want to do manual labor as they used to.”

Chicoine said the company will soon start the process of filling out a written application to seek Planning Board approval for the project. He said he’d like to begin the excavation work as soon as possible and hopes to open the housing by the end of  March.

“The company is making a significant investment here, obviously,” he said. “We wouldn’t be doing that if we didn’t feel that we had to.”

Code Enforcement Officer Ryan Glover, who invited Chicoine to the meeting, said the town doesn’t have an ordinance based on mobile home units like those proposed, so it will use state law in its review of the plan.

Select Board Chairman Richard Pickett, who also attended the meeting, told Chicoine, “You’re a corporation and a good neighbor, done a lot of good things in our town. We appreciate that. Therefore, if you meet all the parameters and permitting that have to be done to put it in there, within the bounds of legality, as far as I’m concerned, it’s your land and you have a right to do it.”

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