Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990 TAG: 9005080259
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The company, which manufactures glass-fiber cable for communications networks, is located in a 22,500-square-foot building near Home Shopping Network in Salem.
It will move to a 73,000-square-foot building at Valleypointe and increase its work force from 40 to 70 in the first year, according to company President Robert Kopstein.
That would make it the biggest employer at Valleypointe.
Within three years, if its overseas and domestic sales grow as expected, it will have 150 to 170 employees and a second 70,000- to 75,000-square-foot building, he said.
Optical Cable Corp. will pay more than $64,000 a year in real estate and machinery and tools taxes to the county.
That's equal to the real estate tax revenue from 70 houses valued at $80,000 each.
The move also will allow the county and Valleypointe developer Alan Lingerfelt to get $400,000 in industrial access road construction money from the state Department of Transportation.
The county feared it wouldn't get the state money because a qualifying industry hadn't located at Valleypointe.
The state already had given the county a six-month extension of the deadline, until September.
The state helps pay for the construction of roads that are used by industries that manufacture or assemble products sold outside Virginia.
Lingerfelt and the county have spent about $900,000 to build roads at Valleypointe.
Tim Gubala, the county's economic development director, said Optical Cable Corp. had been talking about moving to the county for at least five years.
Kopstein had considered moving to the shell building in Roanoke's Centre for Industry and Technology on U.S. 460 East.
But, Gubala said: "I showed him Valleypointe and he started working with Lingerfelt."
Kopstein said he was attracted to Valleypointe because of its visibility, its quality and its proximity to Interstate 81 and the Roanoke Regional Airport. Valleypointe is near the Peters Creek Road exit on Interstate 581.
The company is moving because there isn't enough room to expand at its current site off Harrison Avenue in Salem, he said. Home Shopping Network intends to buy that building.
It hasn't been decided whether Optical Cable Corp. will buy or lease the building at Valleypointe. Regardless, Kopstein said, he wants to be in the building by August.
Optical Cable Corp. exhibited its products at a high-tech trade fair in West Germany in March. Kopstein has scheduled business trips to Singapore and Japan this spring and summer.
He anticipates the company's sales will grow domestically, too, as cable TV companies switch to fiber optics and smaller cities connect with telephone company fiber optic trunk lines.
The Roanoke County Board of Supervisors is scheduled today to approve $6.5 million in industrial revenue bond financing for Optical Cable Corp.
Of that, $4 million will be for construction and $2.5 million will be for equipment.
by CNB