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

DATE: MONDAY, March 11, 1991                   TAG: 9103110118
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NORTON                                LENGTH: Short

ECONOMY HURTS COALFIELD JOB EFFORT

A weak national economy is hurting the Coalfield Economic Development Authority's efforts to create jobs and making it more expensive to do so, officials said.

In 1989, its inaugural year, the Coalfield Economic Development Authority directly helped create 1,305 jobs through $2.14 million in loans.

Last year, $2.19 million in loans created only 283 jobs.

"The national economy is the key factor in this whole situation," CEDA Executive Director Charlie Yates said. "The country kind of shifted into a downturn this past year and it definitely hurt us."

"In the prospects we're dealing with, there's a slowdown," said Mark Kilduff, a CEDA board member and director of Virginia's Department of Industrial Development.

Kilduff's office attracts all sorts of companies into Virginia. But, he said, for a seven-month period last year, the number of new companies his office added to its list of industrial prospects was cut by about one-third.

"Active prospects have stayed fairly active," Kilduff said. "But the other side of that is finding new companies to put on that list. For the better part of 1990, we didn't have that."

Early last year, CEDA was courting two very good prospects that promised about 500 jobs.

"Both of those projects were put on hold," Yates said. "The reason given was the downturn in the national economy.

by CNB