ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280067
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: STUART
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Vaughan Furniture Co. said Tuesday it will build a $10 million, 250,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Patrick County's new Rich Creek Corporate Park. The operation is expected to create as many as 300 jobs in the next 30 months.
Patrick County received a $350,000 grant from the Governor's Opportunity Fund for improvements to the future site of the plant.
The Vaughan Furniture plant will be the first industry to build in the new park, located about two miles east of Stuart and owned by the county's industrial development authority. It will be on a 30-acre site, and generate an annual payroll of about $4 million.
The plant will have about 250 employees when it opens, probably by the end of the year, with others being added over the next year or so.
The 73-year-old, Galax-based company makes all-wood bedroom furniture for middle- to upper-price level markets. Its sales volume for the 1995 fiscal year totaled $105 million. In the last five years, its sales growth made it necessary to add the manufacturing plant.
Virginia competed with three Tennessee counties for the new plant, but company President William Vaughan said Southwest Virginia had the inside track.
"Because of our ties both in business and family to Southwest Virginia, we hoped to locate in this vicinity. We chose Patrick County because of the inherent benefits of the site and the availability of a quality work force," Vaughan said.
"We were very impressed by the support and encouragement of the local leadership, and with the further cooperation and support of the governor's office," he said. "We were impressed with the effort made by the people in Richmond to help us decide to locate this plant in Virginia."
The Virginia Department of Economic Development will provide training services for future employees.
The town of Stuart has agreed to provide water and sewage treatment services to the park and its first plant. The town will join American Electric Power Co. Inc. in providing utilities to the plant. AEP will extend three-phase 34.5-kilovolt service to the site at no initial cost to the company.
County Administrator David Hoback said negotiations had been under way since the first of the year. The operation will tie in with existing lumber and wood industries in the county.
The Patrick County Board of Supervisors plan to seek a $700,000 Community Development Block Grant to provide water and sewer facilities in the park, and some $170,000 in industrial access funds from the Virginia Department of Transportation on an access road to the park.
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