ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996 TAG: 9605090073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FINCASTLE
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
YORK INTERNATIONAL, air-conditioning and refrigeration equipment maker, chose a Botetourt site for its new plant. The company that air-conditioned the Kremlin and the English Channel Tunnel is coming to Botetourt County.
The county announced Wednesday that York International Corp., a Fortune 500 company that makes commercial and residential air conditioning and refrigeration equipment, will purchase the 75,000-square-foot shell building in the county's EastPark Commerce Center. The company expects to invest $12 million to $15 million in a plant to manufacture air compressors. The factory is to open Aug. 1 and employ 160 assemblers and machinists within five years.
Workers for all but three of the jobs will be hired locally, company officials said, promising pay on a par with median salaries for similar work in the area. As of March 1996, that's about $13 per hour, according to the Virginia Employment Commission.
York vice president Jim Erdly said the ready availability of the county's shell industrial building was attractive because of the company's aggressive time frame for starting production. Since January, the company has looked at 22 sites in four states, all of which had existing buildings.
The building was developed last year by Botetourt County and the Greater Roanoke Valley Development Foundation.
York will pay $1.1 million for the building, although the foundation's original price was $1.4 million, said John Stroud, president of the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce. Stroud said the foundation was able to reduce the price by $150,000 because Botetourt County provided the site. With that, the foundation broke even on the project, Stroud said.
The plant would be one of about two dozen operated by York International, plus others that are joint ventures with other companies.
York International, based in York, Pa., employs 19,000 people in 120 countries.
The company was created when it was spun off from the Borg-Warner Corp., said Rick Burt, its director of marketing. Almost no plants have been closed, he said, except for an older facility in Kentucky a few years ago.
The company posted a $96.1 million net loss in 1995, largely because of one-time expenses related to accounting changes and restructuring of debt. Sales last year were $2.93 billion. In 1994, the company earned $89.8 million on sales of $2.42 billion. The company's common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It closed Wednesday at $50.121/2, down 871/2 cents a share from Tuesday.
County Administrator Jerry Burgess said the county courted York because it fit the profile of the kind of business the county wants: manufacturers that are financially sound, don't require a lot of special environmental considerations, and provide mainly manufacturing jobs.
Botetourt County and a site near Greenville, N.C., were the finalists for the plant, Burgess said.
The county is providing about $200,000 for improvements to the site, an investment it expects to get back in about a year and a half. The company also will receive training funds from the Virginia Department of Economic Development's Workforce Services program.
The incentives include a payback agreement if York does not purchase a building permit within six months and invest $9 million and employ 120 full-time workers within four years.
The Roanoke Valley has enough skilled workers to meet the company's needs, according to Marjorie Skidmore of the state employment commission's Roanoke office. But with the unemployment rate so low, some workers may leave other companies for jobs at the new factory.
"When the unemployment rate is this low, you're not drawing on the people who are unemployed, it's the people who feel they are underemployed," she said.
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines KEYWORDS: JOBCHEKby CNB