ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 1997 TAG: 9702190070
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: VINTON
SOURCE: CHRISTINA NUCKOLS STAFF WRITER
A small but growing manufacturer of emergency vehicles plans to move from Stewartsville to Vinton, company and town officials said Tuesday.
M&W Fire Apparatus is expected to construct a 14,000-square-foot building in the Vinton Industrial Park and move its business operations in September, said co-owner and president Doug Widner.
The company's one part-time and 14 full-time employees will follow the company to Vinton. Widner said M&W plans to add six manufacturing and sales jobs over the next two years. The average employee at M&W now makes an hourly wage of more than $11 an hour, Widner said.
He said the company's long-term goal is to employ 30 to 40 workers.
"It's a small business, but we would hope that it would prosper," said Vinton Mayor Charles Hill.
M&W was one of several companies formed as spinoffs from the closing of Grumman Emergency Products Inc.'s Roanoke fire engine plant. That factory closed in September 1992.
M&W now occupies a 4,000-square-foot building in Bedford County, and the site is not large enough for expansion.
"We need more space and more building," Widner said.
The company plans to construct a second building at the Vinton site of about 12,000 square feet. The timing will depend on the growth of the business.
Vinton Town Council authorized a lease-purchase of 1.92 acres to M&W at its Tuesday evening meeting. The company will pay $24,000 for the vacant lot, half of it at the time of the sale and the remainder a year later. M&W also will lease 2.5 adjacent acres from the town for a nominal $1 for 25 years. That property was formerly part of the town's landfill. M&W was not interested in buying the land because no construction can occur on the old landfill, but the company will lease it for parking space, said Town Manager Clay Goodman. The area M&W will lease was used for brush, construction debris, bricks and concrete, not household garbage.
Widner said his company manufactures fire engines and ambulances and also repairs and refurbishes older emergency vehicles. Its customers are volunteer companies and municipalities located primarily in the mid-Atlantic region. Recent customers included Bedford County and Montvale.
Goodman said the M&W purchase will leave one remaining vacant lot containing two acres in the town's industrial park. There are four other industries in the park, which was created in 1987. Town officials are in the process of developing a plan for the 100-acre McDonald farm on Hardy Road as their next economic development project.
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