Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 17, 1993 TAG: 9309170055
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MEBANE, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
The same thing is going on in South Carolina.
"We're feeling really good right now. We've got our fingers and eyes and toes crossed," Ann LaRose said from her Summerville, S.C., Chamber of Commerce office. "We've got 10 trucks of surveyors out here right now."
But when told that the Mebane site, too, was thick with surveyors' flags and cones as well as purchase-option negotiators, her hopes were somewhat deflated.
"Ew, I hate that," she told The Herald-Sun of Durham.
Hopes are still high at other sites in the Southeast, including Athens, Ga., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. Officials there said the sites also are under heavy scrutiny and substantial state assistance has been offered. The $300 million plant would employ 1,500 people.
In North Carolina, Gov. Jim Hunt has offered to build a $35 million training facility and provide infrastructure work.
Representatives from at least two companies - Duke Power and Norfolk Southern Corp. - have approached landowners for purchase options, sources said.
Mebane banker L. Neal Smith, president of First Savings & Loan Association, said he agreed to a three-month option on his 43-acre farm that can be renewed for an additional three months. He said an agreement has been struck on a selling price.
But the landowner who likely would benefit most from purchase options, C.M. "Mack" Ray Jr., wasn't talking.
Ray, a dairy farmer, owns several hundred acres near the site. "I would really rather not talk about that," he said when asked if agents had approached him.
Smith said he dealt with a man he had encountered 13 years ago while conducting an easement negotiation with Duke Power officials.
A Duke Power spokesman confirmed that the utility company is negotiating land deals in the Mebane area on behalf of "a major industrial client."
"I'll let you draw your own conclusions on who that might be," Randy Wheless said Wednesday. "But I can say that we've purchased some property options in the Duke Power name for the client."
Bill Lee, chief executive officer of Duke Power, met with Hunt and Mercedes officials in New York last month.
Wheless said the company often goes to bat for its big clients. That holds true, too, for Norfolk Southern, which has a railroad line running parallel with U.S. 70 just north of the Mebane site.
Norfolk Southern's Roanoke spokesman, Bob Auman, declined to say whether the railway is buying land for Mercedes until a formal announcement is made about the site. That announcement is expected by Oct. 1.
But he said the practice is common. The railroad assisted Toyota with a plant in Georgetown, Ky., in the mid-1980s, then helped Mercedes' rival German automaker, BMW, when it chose to build in Spartanburg, S.C.
"I can tell you we've had a good relationship with automotive companies," he said. "Our biggest customer is Ford Motor Co."
Workers have been drilling soil samples, checking to make sure no rock underlies the potential factory site, he said.
While private contractors appear to be doing most of this work, state engineers accompanied at least one survey crew, Rowland said.
All that makes Rowland certain that Mercedes is well on its way to North Carolina. "They wouldn't be spending all that money if something wasn't going on," he said.
But Smith isn't sure. He noted that the amount of money being committed to the purchase options - less than $1,000 for his property, for example - isn't enough for the automaker's officials to cry over should they decide that other sites under discussion offer the company a better opportunity.
Purchase options give the buyer the first right to buy; they typically cost from 3 percent to 5 percent of the property's value.
by CNB