Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 12, 1995 TAG: 9505120006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It's difficult to put together the right combination of land, incentives, work force and infrastructure to entice a multibillion-dollar corporation to build a 5,000-employee plant in your back yard.
In the New River Valley, local government officials and economic development executives wondered why they did not even get a phone call about the Motorola plant - considering the proximity of Virginia Tech's engineering expertise and at least two large sites in the valley that could have catered to a project of Motorola's size.
Three weeks ago, Montgomery County Economic Development Director Don Moore was leading a tour of the county's industrial sites. Had he ever had a chance to make a pitch to Motorola, he was asked.
"No, sir," he replied then.
The county is sitting on 164 acres of prime industrial land off Interstate 81 that it plans to convert into the Falling Branch industrial park. Moore said he had put in a call to Richmond to make sure the state Department of Economic Development knew that, and to try to figure out why the county hadn't been in the running for the electronics giant.
This week, the director of research at the department, George Harven, filled him in.
A consultant hired by Motorola visited Falling Branch at some point but never contacted Montgomery County officials. Looking for an 80- to 120-acre site, 3 million gallons of water a day and utilities, the consultant toured at least 20 other sites around the state, without help from state economic development officials - "a rather atypical manner" of searching, Moore said.
With the visit to Falling Branch - the only site the consultant looked at in the New River Valley - and information on the industrial park contained in the state's database, "the consultant felt like they had all the information they needed," said Larry Linkous, chairman of the county's Board of Supervisors.
Still, "I don't know how they could have really seen the potential without consulting us," he said.
Falling Branch is as yet undeveloped. Still standing are barnyard buildings and fences that will have to be removed, and tons of dirt that will have to be graded. The county and town continue to work on an agreement to provide water and sewer service to the site.
The site Motorola chose in Goochland County has its infrastructure in place, a lake and two companies already operating there.
"We're not quite far enough along yet," Linkous said. "At least we got a viewing. There were no sites not chosen because of things the community did not do.
"The site in Richmond just stood out above the others.
The company settled on a 230-acre site west of the state capital to build a factory that could eventually employ 5,000 workers. Afterward, corporate officials said they had looked at over 300 potential locations throughout the country.
Motorola won't say why other sites lost out. It considers its site selection process proprietary information, and won't comment on why it decides against a particular site, company spokesman Jeff Gorin said.
Franklyn Moreno, executive director of the New River Valley Economic Development Alliance, which is charged with marketing the entire valley to prospective industries, knew a match of some significance was afoot several months back when the state Department of Economic Development contacted him about putting together information on possible sites in the region.
Though Moreno didn't know the name of the company he was bidding for - "at the time, we had a sense that it was a big company," he said - he put together a package on the New River Industrial Park, the 650-acre site in Pulaski County that formerly was home to the AT&T plant.
He never heard anything back.
Why might the AT&T site not have been selected? Did it have something to do with topography, utilities or some other practical reason? Moreno doesn't know. "Those are the hardest questions to get answered in this business," he said.
Motorola's Gorin did say that proximity to educational opportunities was "part of the equation [for his company]. That's not the only thing we look at."
Virginia Commonwealth University, scheduled to open a new engineering school next year, will receive $16 million from the state to develop an electronics manufacturing curriculum, part of $85.6 million in incentives the state offered Motorola.
Of course, if being close to an engineering school was important, what about Virginia Tech?
Moreno said the alliance's promotion focused on that angle. "We were promoting the location next to Tech ... the premier engineering school in the state of Virginia." Tech has been buffeted in recent years by budget cuts, and now VCU is receiving money to start up its engineering efforts. "That part is probably more difficult to understand," he said.
Tech President Paul Torgersen said it "would be a short-sighted view," to be overly concerned about VCU's good fortune now, and that it could take decades for the new school to achieve the prominence that Tech currently holds.
Torgersen ate with top Motorola officials at a Richmond dinner a couple months ago where he was essentially the state's higher education representative, and he will continue to work with the company, he said. "We're delighted - because it's good for Virginia."
State Secretary of Commerce and Trade Robert Skunda said he doesn't know specifically why Motorola picked Richmond and didn't choose Pulaski County or any of the dozen possibilities the state forwarded to the company.
"They're the only ones who can really speak on their behalf," he said. "There's a variety of things at work." He said company officials just liked the "comfort level" they felt about their experience in Richmond, a feeling like the one they got in Austin, Texas, where they opened a plant two decades ago.
Skunda pointed to the state's involvement in persuading Volvo GM Heavy Truck Corp. to expand at its county plant last year, as an example of the government's attention to Southwest Virginia. Virginia worked out a $30 million incentive package to get Volvo GM to stay and not move to North Carolina or elsewhere, as had been rumored.
"We jumped, too," Skunda said. "We knew the importance of keeping those jobs in the New River Valley.
"Why [Motorola] ruled out other areas I don't really know," he said. But whenever big fish start looking at Virginia, the New River Valley will get their fair shot, he said. "The best thing you can do is go back and try to land the next one going by."
Staff Writer Brian Kelley contributed information to this report.
by CNB