Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 4, 1993 TAG: 9303040416
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
FIRST UNION'S GOOD NEWS
FIRST UNION Corp.'s plan to create at least 400 jobs in the Roanoke Valley is good news for this region. How good?Let us count the ways.
Coming two days after the merger with Dominion Bank was consummated, Wednesday's announcement adds substance to earlier predictions - by First Union's Virginia Chairman Warner Dalhouse and First Union Corp. Chairman Ed Crutchfield - that the merger's net effect would be positive. Within just a few years, the Roanoke Valley may well end up with more jobs than are lost this year from the merger.
The corporation is moving the central offices and operations of its consumer-loan and credit-card services to the valley, in addition to expanding its mortgage-servicing activities. These operations will serve not only the region covered by the former Dominion Bank, but all the markets First Union now serves and those into which it will expand. Employment, this means, should swell here as First Union grows.
First Union will soon be the nation's eighth-largest bank holding company - and as plans to acquire McLean-based First American demonstrate, it intends to keep growing. Additional jobs will sprout here to support operations in the Washington metropolitan market. And, with nationwide interstate banking on the horizon, opportunities for further growth are considerable. Granted, First Union one day may decide to move regional offices closer to East Coast markets. For now anyway, Roanoke is, as they say, well-positioned.
The new jobs will be "good jobs," Benjamin Jenkins III, president of the First Union National Bank of Virginia, told Wednesday's press conference. They're full-time; some will be supervisory. According to Jenkins, because First Union focuses on customer service - and this is the role of the incoming operations - the bank will prize these employees and their work.
The decision to bring the jobs to the valley underscores what Dalhouse called "a fundamental advantage that we have in this community" - the quality of the work force. Dominion employees apparently impressed First Union with their low turnover and absentee rates and high skill-levels and productivity.
More generally, First Union's announcement demonstrates that the Roanoke Valley can compete for economic development with the Charlottes and Atlantas and Raleighs - all sites where First Union has a presence, and sites where it could have located the operations it's moving here. Charlotte is losing 200 of the jobs we're gaining. This was no favor to the valley, of course, but a business decision governed by economics. By such economics as, for instance, the favorable occupancy and lease arrangements set up by Dalhouse before the merger (thanks), and by lower operating costs here.
Sweetening the economics are public moneys to fund employee training - affirming a new level of aggressiveness in local economic-development efforts. Dalhouse praised city, county and state officials for their "support and encouragement in making the new jobs possible." In the city's case, the training incentive is justifiable in part because it will be offered to any company that agrees to create 200 or more jobs within the "enterprise zone" encompassing much of the downtown.
First Union is showing commendable commitment to Roanoke's downtown - or rather, insight into the value of locating there. Two hundred of the new jobs will go to the Plantation Road facility in Roanoke County (sweetened with some county money). But 200 will go downtown, and another 100 will be moved from Valley Court. This eases worries that First Union might leave the downtown with seriously reduced employment and occupancy rates. Preventing that destabilizing effect and the loss in tax revenues is another justification for the city's training incentive.
First Union's announcement offers an opportunity to put aside some of the moaning and groaning and blame-casting that have dominated discussion of the merger. It's unfortunate, to say the least, that hundreds are losing their Dominion jobs, and suffering for it. It's fortunate that others have focused efforts on encouraging First Union's presence here.
This week's completion of the acquisition and good news on the job front mark, for the entire community, a fitting occasion to convey a message to First Union: Welcome. We believe you'll like it here.