Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 2, 1990 TAG: 9006020307
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PETER MATHEWS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: FAIRLAWN LENGTH: Medium
The building is a potential economic development tool for a county where unemployment was 7.7 percent in March and expected to rise. AT&T, which is moving its Fairlawn operations to Texas and Mexico, will start laying off workers in August.
"We're very pleased about this announcement," said Peter Huber, assistant county administrator for economic development. "It's helpful to have a variety of different-sized buildings. An industry is not something that's going to fit in a neat little package."
Larry Framme, state secretary of economic development, said about 70 percent of industrial prospects prefer to locate to existing buildings.
The shell building will be on a 40-acre site near the Warner-Lambert plant in the county-owned industrial park in Dublin.
County Administrator Joe Morgan said the design was complete and ground could be broken this fall or next spring.
Under the Virginia Shell Building Initiative loan program, the state will lend the county $749,979 and pay the interest on the loan for five years. Pulaski must sell the building in that time; if it doesn't, it will have to repay the principal and interest in a lump sum.
Economic development officials were confident that won't happen. They said most shell buildings sell within about two years.
The interest rate has not been set, but it will be based on five-year Treasury notes plus .75 percent, said Betty-Anne Teter, who administers the program for the state Department of Economic Development.
The county will pay $210,000 to grade the site, and its only other cost is the value of the land - about $400,000.
Pulaski also can offer industrial prospects another 20,000-square-foot shell building, the 400,000-square-foot Burlington plant in Pulaski and the 550,000-square-foot AT&T plant, which Framme said was being "exquisitely maintained."
Framme toured the AT&T plant before making the announcement Friday morning. He was finishing a three-day tour of Southwest Virginia.
Pulaski was one of three counties to receive the loans, winning a competition based on building design, site characteristics and marketability of the site, Framme said.
Greensville and Amherst counties also obtained them. Five other counties were unsuccessful. Montgomery County, which has sold one shell building and plans to build another, did not apply.
Carroll and Halifax counties and Waynesboro obtained loans from the shell building program last year.
by CNB