Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 24, 1994 TAG: 9404260004
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Ed Couvrette jabbed a meaty finger onto a map of Virginia.
Right here, he said, is where he wanted to move his company.
His finger came to rest on Staunton.
The California maker of drive-through automated teller machines had already decided he needed an East Coast location for his factory; that's where most of his customers were - and his future customers would be.
And he'd already decided that, of all the East Coast states, Virginia was the one he'd pick - ``close to Northern markets but far enough South to avoid some of the problems inherent in Northern markets. I think unions. I think work ethic.''
Moreover - and here comes the important part for the Roanoke Valley - he'd already decided he didn't want to be on Interstate 95. Too congested. Too expensive. Too much like the overdeveloped Southern California his young company was fleeing.
So he looked along Interstate 81.
``I stuck my finger on Staunton, Virginia, and said `I need to be right there.' Size didn't matter for what we wanted to do.''
Well, maybe a little. Upon closer inspection, Couvrette decided Staunton wasn't quite big enough to offer the labor pool he needed. So he turned south - to the Roanoke Valley.
In 1990, Couvrette moved the manufacturing part of his Couvrette Building Systems from suburban San Diego to Salem, where the company now employs about 65 people. (The headquarters and the research-and-design department, which draws workers from California's aerospace industry, stayed put.)
Couvrette's choice of the Roanoke Valley illustrates a number of points key to Western Virginia's economic future.
First of all, the region's location astride I-81 makes it ideally suited for companies involved in distributing products east of the Mississippi.
Couvrette's industrial jobs and the telemarketing jobs at mail-order houses such as Hanover Direct and Orvis and may not seem similar, but they share one thing in common: For them, the Roanoke Valley's geography is a help, not a hindrance.
The second point Couvrette highlights is the importance of a community's labor pool, a factor that's often far more critical thana community's its population.
A community can't attract employers if it doesn't have the right employees. That's one bar to the Roanoke Valley attracting some high-tech firms;it doesn't have a big high-tech workforce. But it does have plenty of welders.
``We have no shortage of metal-working skills here,'' says Beth Doughty, who runs the Roanoke Valley Regional Economic Development Partnership, the valley's main job-recruitment agency. ``That goes back to the days of the railroad. If you ran an ad for welders here, you'd get 300 answers tomorrow.''
Those are the kinds of workers Couvrette needed to put together his drive-through ATMs.
In fact, Couvrette has found little need to advertise his company's openings because so many job seekers come to him.
``We're deluged,'' plant manager John Conley says. ``People come in at a steady rate filling out applications. When Grumman and Gardner-Denver closed, we had a couple of hundred people right there.''
In a more normal week, 50 to 75 people fill out applications.
They're folks like Wesley Willis, a 28-year-old welder who learned his skill at the John W. Hancock Jr. Inc. steel plant in Salem. When he lost his job there this winter, he turned to Couvrette.
``I just got lucky,'' Willis says. ``You're usually lucky to find welding jobs in this area.''
Or any kind of factory job. The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has been declining for decades. The Roanoke Valley has been no exception: In the past four years, 4,500 manufacturing jobs here have disappeared, a shrinkage of 9.3 percent.
With a workforce developed over the years by other industrial employers, ``towns like Roanoke are ideal for people who want to manufacture,'' Couvrette says. There's just one problem, and that's one for the community to wrestle with as it plots its economic future. ``There just are not a lot of [entrepreneurs] in this country,'' Couvrette says, ``who want to go into manufacturing.''
That's why Willis is worried, in very personal terms, about the valley's economic future.
``These business jobs that require computers -,'' he says, shaking his head. ``You can put me behind a computer; I don't know anything about a computer. But now you get me behind a welding shield or a forklift -.'' Then he brightens up.
His wish for the Roanoke Valley? ``We need more manufacturing plants.''
by CNB