Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 8, 1990                   TAG: 9006080128
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MOVE INTO SOUTHWEST VA. PROVING VALUABLE TO C&P

Labor is available, the people don't want to move, and credit or bank back-room processing centers can be located anywhere, he said.

Stallard, speaking to about 200 people at his company's annual community leaders' breakfast at the Sheraton Airport Inn, said C&P's choice of Norton for a directory-assistance center employing 140 people was a good business decision, not a social move.

He said former Gov. Gerald Baliles persuaded C&P to open the center. A similar operation will open in Pulaski next year.

The Norton office has the lowest employee turnover and tardiness record in his company. Stallard compared the Southwestern part of the state with Northern Virginia where C&P has unfilled employment orders and has to compete with the federal government.

Stallard, a native of Norton, said he's been working with Warner Dalhouse, Dominion Bankshares chairman, and others "to advertise and point out the real assets of Southwest Virginia." He announced two moves that promise more business for the region:

An advisory board of corporate executives from Richmond and Northern Virginia is being selected to work with the Coalfields Economic Development Authority.

C&P staff members are preparing a publication listing the economic-development assets and attractions that may persuade businesses to locate in Western Virginia counties. The booklet is to be completed in about six months.

The Roanoke Valley has "unprecedented growth," but growth is not what it should be farther west, the utility executive said.

C&P, which reports 325 percent growth for investors since the 1984 divestiture of AT&T's Bell System, has had no rate increases in six years "and I hope that record continues," Stallard said. He recalled the new state law limiting public utilities to one rate increase a year and said, "They owe us six."

New telephone services are expected to enable the company to operate without raising rates, he said.

"You'd be shocked at the technology coming on line," Stallard told the community leaders.

Information technology has moved rapidly, he said, as the freedom movement in Europe expands, "so that no government can say to its people, `You have the best' when they see other countries on television."