Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 17, 1993 TAG: 9303010192
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Michael Stowe Staff Writer
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
MONTGOMERY WON'T GET NEW PLANT
Another one's gotten away. Last week, Norfolk Southern Corp. announced it would build its national customer service center in Atlanta, not Roanoke, This week, it was Montgomery County's turn to be disappointed.\ One day after Valentine's Day, Don Moore's heart was broken
Montgomery County's executive director of economic develpment learned Monday that an international fiber-optics company had decided not to build a plant in Montgomery County
Instead, Siecor Corp. will build a 350,000-square-foot factory in North Carolina that will make fibver-optic cable and employ 603 workers when it reaches full capacity in five years.
A tract in Montgomery County near the Falling Branch Elementary School had been one of the final four sites considererd by the company.
David Day, Siecor's senior vice president of operations, traveled to Montgomery County on Monday afternoon to deliver the bad news.
It was a sad way for Moore to end a project that had consumed him for six months. "For a while we worked all day, every day on this project," he said. "I'm real disappointed."
State, county and regional economic development officials have courted Siecor - a joint venture between Corning Inc. and Siemens Corp. - since September.
Moore said Montgomery County spend more time and effort to attract Siecor than it has on any other prospect in the past decade. "On a scale of one
to 10, in terms of the kind of industry we would like to come to the New River Valley, Siecor was an 11," said Jack Lewis, chairman of the Montgomery Regional Economic Development Commission.
Montgomery County was eliminated from consideration because the industrial site didn't meet Siecor's specifications, Moore said. He didn't elaborate, but stressed that the county had done all it could to accommodate the fiber-optics company, including buying an option on the site and rezoning it.
Lois A. Boynton, a spokeswoman for Siecor, said the fiber-optics company hasn't made a final decision on where its plant will be built, but the three other possible sites are in North Carolina.
The company's U.S. operating center is in Hickory, N.C. It also has plants in Rocky Mount, N.C., and Keller, Texas.
The 155-acre site Siecor considererd in Montgomery County was about 200 feet west of the Falling Branch Elementary School property line. The county has an option to buy the site from Dale Teel.
With a state grant, the county already had completed preliminary engineering and analysis of the site.
In early 1991, the county received a $25,000 Rural Economic Development Grant from the Virgina Department of Housing and Community Development to help prepare the site for industrial development.
This month, the Board of Supervisors rezoned the land for commercial use and agreed to widen the Falling Branch Road bridge and upgrade the road to industrial standards.
Henry Jablonski, a member of the Board of Supervisors, was disheartened when told that Siecor no longer was considering Montgomery County. "We saw this as a great potential company that could have really helped our unemployment situation," he said.
Siecor officials contacted county officials in Septmeber after seeing a magazine ad from the Economic Development Alliance promoting the New River Valley.
Later that month, company officials inspected five sites in Montgomery County and six in Pulaski County before settling on the lot behind Falling Branch Elementary School as one of its final four sites.
On Nov. 16, Virginia Secretary of Economic Development Cathleen Magennis and county officials presented an initial proposal to company officials in North Carolina.
For the next three weeks, regional economic development officials prepared a final proposal that included a community and workforce profile; history, geography, education and transportation information; the county's fees and taxes; and housing prices and descriptions of some subdivisions.
The proposal was mailed Dec. 3 and the waiting game began.
Siecor officials first said they would make their final site selection in early January. But the decision kept getting pushed back.
The fact that a Siecor official would make a personal visit to say the campany isn't coming to Montgomery Copunty is a n indicator of what a classy company it is, Lewis said.
"There is no real way to say how disappointed we are," Lewis said. "...It's a big loss for Virginia, not just Montgomery County."
The county will continue to market the site to other industrial prospects.