THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603290211
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 19 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF REPORT
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Portsmouth Tent and Awning Co., one of the last businesses to relocate from the area cleared for I.C. Norcom High School, has reopened at 3923 Victory Blvd. in the building formerly occupied by Virginia Carolina Tools.
``We started to move Feb. 19, and we're still trying to find things,'' company President George Jordan said last week.
The company ``almost moved to Suffolk,'' he said, because the family was having trouble finding a suitable place in Portsmouth that was properly zoned for manufacturing.
``We could use a little more space, but we can manage here,'' Jordan said. The company is a custom canvas shop that makes tents, awnings, truck and boat covers. In addition to three family members, the company employs four others.
Once known as Yeates Manufacturing, the company dates to early in this century. The Yeates family started the business in Driver. From Driver, the company moved to a Quonset hut near the Naval Shipyard just before World War II.
In 1961, Raymond Medvin Jordan, father of George Jordan, bought the business, then located at Queen Street and Elm Avenue. That building burned in the 1960s and the business moved to rented quarters at 930 High St., where it stayed until the Jordans bought 1600 High St., at the corner of Peninsula Avenue, in 1982.
Medvin Jordan died five years ago, but his widow, Emma, and their children - George, David and Alice - continued with the business. Emma Jordan retired several years ago.
Moving the business recently was not the first time the Jordans had been uprooted by the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority. The Jordans bought a house at 1904 High St. in 1962 and Mrs. Jordan lived there until PRHA also took it for the Norcom campus.
``My mother moved to Chesapeake,'' George Jordan said. by CNB