Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 19, 1993 TAG: 9308190215
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
The number of new jobs opening up range from a dozen in one place to more than 150 in another.
There are those who say the new jobs have been a long time coming. Pulaski County's unemployment rate has gone above 12 percent in recent months, second only to Dickenson County.
Now the plant expansions and store openings are jumping out one on top of another.
Earlier this month, Pulaski Furniture Corp. announced a $10 million, 75,000-square-foot expansion creating 110 jobs in the next nine months. Four days later, Renfro Corp. approached Pulaski Town Council about a conditional-use zoning permit that would allow it to add 150 jobs.
In Pulaski's downtown business section, a revived Pulaski Main Street program has brought new businesses into empty stores and added more than 50 jobs over the past year. Another dozen employees will be hired at a Save-A-Lot store, scheduled to open Sept. 15 in a former A&P store in Pulaski Mall on East Main Street.
In May, C&P Telephone Co. announced plans to expand its 2-year-old Pulaski directory-assistance center by 30 operators, for a total of about 120. Magnox Inc. is nearing completion of its $10 million expansion started last year.
"They've chosen to make these expansions here in Pulaski," Mayor Gary Hancock said, when they could have made them practically anywhere. He said that speaks well for the kind of employees the companies find in Pulaski.
"We spend a tremendous amount of time trying to recruit new businesses to come into town," he said, but lately the biggest expansions are coming from existing industries. "We've appreciated the contribution they've made through many years to Pulaski."
The new Pulaski Furniture jobs will be high-skilled computer workers who will use computers to fashion molds and pieces of furniture that can be assembled prior to shipment from the plant or sent unassembled at lower costs to be put together at their destinations.
"There's no new technology. It's all tried-and-true technology. All we're doing is putting it in one place for a specific purpose," said John Wampler, executive vice president at Pulaski Furniture.
It used to take 2 1/2 hours to set up individual molds for cutting a wooden part for a piece of furniture. "Now you set it up in minutes," Wampler said. "You punch in that program number and, zap, your machine's ready to roll."
He could not say what the salary ranges for the new jobs would be. They will be based on skill levels, he said, and the ranges have not been set yet.
Renfro Corp. now has 1,130 employees in its two Pulaski plants, and hopes to expand into the former L.A. Joe's Department Store building. Pulaski Town Council and the Pulaski Planning Commission will hold a joint public hearing on the necessary conditional-use permit at 7 p.m. Monday.
James "Doc" Reagan, Pulaski manager for Renfro, said the number of employees actually could increase to more than 1,300 in the near future. He said there are some unfilled jobs even before the planned expansion is carried out.
Pulaski County still has not recovered from the closing of the AT&T plant at Fairlawn in 1990, or cutbacks at Radford Arsenal. But the county is planting more jobs seeds at the former AT&T site, too.
Pulaski County bought the remaining 650 acres of the AT&T property for $1.3 million earlier this year. The other 80 acres had been bought by New River Industries. The county has conferred several times with Radford City Council on approaches to turning the acreage into a regional industrial park.
by CNB