Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 23, 1994 TAG: 9402230160
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But at the 11th hour - or more precisely, at 4:50 Tuesday afternoon - a deal was struck that should assure that hundreds of expected jobs stay in the county.
Hanover Direct is eager to close on the property this week and break ground for a 530,000-square-foot catalog distribution center March 15, a county official said.
That center is the larger of two sites Hanover Direct is opening in the valley. The other site, in Bonsack, houses the Tweeds catalog operation.
Hanover Direct is the country's fifth-largest specialty mail-order company.
As an incentive for the company to locate here, Roanoke County planned to buy 15 acres of the 53-acre Old Hollins Road site to give to the company in a few years so it could expand. But geotechnical studies of the property about three weeks ago revealed too much bedrock to make it usable for a 400,000- to 500,000-square-foot expansion.
"We really thought it was going to kill the deal," said Brian Duncan, assistant director of economic development for Roanoke County. "At first, we thought they could just go to North Carolina."
But county officials scrambled and found 15 suitable acres on the other side of the Hanover Direct site and began negotiating with the owners, the heirs of the Hinman estate. The owners - whose family has owned the property since at least 1888 - signed an agreement with the county at 4:50 p.m. Tuesday, Duncan said. The Board of Supervisors held a closed session during its regular meeting to discuss the deal, which it approved.
The owners agreed to sell their property for the same price the county planned to pay for the original 15 acres - $272,375.
Friendship Manor Apartment Village Corp., which is selling 38 acres to Hanover Direct for $699,000, now will be asked to release the county from the agreement to buy the unusable 15 acres, but contingencies for such problems were built into the deal.
The property has too much bedrock to allow the facility - once expanded to its full 1 million square feet - to be built all on the same elevation.
Shifting the site of the 15-acre expansion property means the center will be repositioned on the main, 38-acre site to be closer to the county's new land, and there will be less parking than planned. The county's Industrial Development Authority also must move a cemetery that is on the newly acquired site.
The facility that Hanover Direct will break ground on next month is 60,000 square feet larger than the original plans of 470,000 square feet and will employ 300 people its first year, Duncan said.
The mail-order company hopes to have the distribution center open before Christmas, a busy season for its Domestications home-furnishings catalog. Domestications is the company's largest catalog, with more than $300 million in sales each year.
Hanover Direct's plan is to employ 600 its second year, at both the Old Hollins site and the center at Jack E. Smith Industrial Park. Then the center plans to expand onto the 15 acres the county will retain until then, employing 1,200 sometime between its second or third year of operations, Duncan said. The jobs created are expected to pay between $6 and $10 an hour.
Also included in the county's incentive package is $230,000 to hook up water and sewer services to the site and $900,000 to widen a mile of Old Hollins Road and install a traffic light.
by CNB