Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 21, 1993 TAG: 9303210018
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell Staff Writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
WHEN A JOB LEAVES TOWN, MORE THAN ONE PAYCHECK GOES WITH IT
YOU don't have to work for Dominion Bank to be zapped by the layoffs there.Ask Monty Goff, general manager and head golf professional at Countryside Golf and Tennis. Or Linda Kelley, owner of the Blue Jean Hair Saloon.
They're losing customers big time because of the job losses at Dominion.
Ask George Logan, owner of Valley Motorsport, who says his car business was doing just fine until last September.
"Then all of a sudden things got soft, and they've stayed that way," he said.
First Union Corp. of Charlotte announced in September that it was going to buy Dominion - and that the deal would cost hundreds of Roanoke Valley Dominion employees their jobs.
Employees like Wayne and Carolyn Sink, who have 54 years with Dominion between them. Employees like Mark Seiler, Harry Brewbaker and Connie Watkins.
Faced with the loss of their jobs, these folks are doing what anyone would do in such circumstances. They're carefully watching what they spend.
Brewbaker and Watkins, who are married to each other, say this year's vacation is "out the window."
Seiler won't be playing as much golf at Countryside, where the green fees can add up. He'll probably give up his four season tickets to Virginia Tech football games, and he and his wife won't be selling her '83 Plymouth in order to buy a newer car from his parents.
"In six or seven months I might have to buy food with that money," Seiler said.
Victims of the Dominion-First Union deal talk about eating out less and limiting their moviegoing to the 99-cent theaters, waiting longer between haircuts, packing lunch instead of buying it, purchasing their groceries in bulk, postponing clothing purchases, cutting back on recreation, reducing charitable contributions - whatever it takes to save money.
"All my priorities have changed a little bit," Seiler said.
He's not alone, and the Dominion employees' belt-tightening is rippling through the rest of the economy like rainwater running down a windshield.
When they don't spend money, someone else doesn't make money.
Tom NcNeer, ticket manager for athletics at Virginia Tech, may not get Seiler's order for four stadium seats. Last season, tickets were $60 apiece on the family plan.
Jane Bonomo will have to wait awhile longer for bank employees to visit her downtown dress shop in search of something new for their wardrobes.
"When they're jumpy and scared they just don't like to spend money," she said.
The restaurants where Wayne and Carolyn Sink like to take their grown children for dinner after Sunday services at Green Ridge Baptist Church may be seeing less of the group unless someone else in the family picks up the bill occasionally.
Logan or another dealer won't get the Sinks' car business for awhile, either. They were going to trade in their Thunderbird and Buick Century, both 10 years old, but now they plan to drive 'em a while longer. Fortunately, Sink's a bit of an amateur mechanic and the cars are running well.
The stories go on and on, and in countless variations, as the Roanoke Valley and its neighbors are reminded that economic setbacks don't take place in a vacuum.
Call it the dark side of "trickle down."
"You'd have to look long and hard to find someone in this valley who doesn't bank [at Dominion] or have a relative who works there," Logan said. "It was a huge psychological hit."
Logan believes adverse economic developments tend to become self-perpetuating in the Roanoke area anyway, because of a widespread misperception (in his view) that "the place is going to hell in a handbasket." He calls it a "psychological disease."
Fellow auto dealer Bill Pinkerton knows what his competitor is talking about.
"People who still have jobs don't buy, because they're afraid," said Pinkerton, the president of Pinkerton Chevrolet GEO Inc. "Everybody in the car business knows that the single biggest effect on sales is consumer confidence."
Pinkerton said his own recent sales have been characterized by "spurts" and "dead spots," but a bit soft overall. "The trouble is, the spurts don't make up for the dead spots," he said.
Other recent high-profile economic hits in the region have included the closing of the Grumman Emergency Products Inc. fire-engine factory, the sale of the Gardner-Denver Mining and Construction Division to a buyer who is moving the operation to Texas, layoffs at the Radford arsenal, and the impending closing of the Sears Telecatalog Center.
As in the case of Dominion, there has been or will be economic fallout beyond the direct job losses, and it will hit innocent bystanders. Ask Harry Ulrich. He's sales manager for Roanoke's Noland Co., which supplied the Grumman and Gardner-Denver plants with steel fittings and other gear.
Those accounts, together with the recently closed Blue Bird Body Co. in Buena Vista, were worth about $200,000 a year to Noland Co., he said.
"No one lost his job here," Ulrich said. "But we're gonna be going out and looking for new business."
Job losses related to the area's major layoffs and firings could happen if business for suppliers of goods and services drops off precipitously enough.
The phenomenon is tough to forecast accurately because of variables in economic conditions, and tough to measure because of differences among jobs. Job losses in manufacturing, for example, typically have a greater effect than declines in retail or office jobs.
"It would be real hard to assess what the impact is going to be" in the Roanoke area, said William Mezger, chief economist with the Virginia Employment Commission. "They all seem to follow their own pattern."
Dominion Bank had a gargantuan appetite for paper, and Dillard Paper Co. gladly helped to feed it.
"Dominion was a good customer," said Dillard Vice President and General Manager Danielle Yarber, stressing the "good." She declined to state the value of the account, but it was big enough to help keep her employees busy, and she would love to continue the relationship with First Union.
The same was true at Double Envelope Corp., which is likewise courting First Union.
"We're big enough that losing the account wouldn't put us out of business" or even cause layoffs, Double Envelope President T. Dalton Miller said. But it could cause the company to adjust work schedules and "redouble sales efforts."
"We're going to try to look at it as positively as possible," Miller said.
The arsenal layoffs, now numbering in the hundreds, have stunned the New River Valley economy. One measure of their effect is a rise of more than 15 percent in applications for free or reduced-cost school lunches in Montgomery County this year.
"We've seen an increase steadily since the layoffs started," said Michael Marcenelle, food services supervisor for the county schools. "We are continuing to see applications."
School officials in Roanoke and Roanoke County also report increases in the applications, though not as much as in Montgomery County. Pauline Holloway, food services supervisor for Roanoke County schools, said the state Department of Education is encouraging her and her counterparts to make the lunch program known to the management of plants and businesses that are laying off employees.
It's Uncle Sam who pays for those lunches. You may never have laid eyes on the arsenal or any of the other plants and businesses that are letting people go. But if you're a federal taxpayer, those job losses are costing you a little bit of money.
You might think Monty Goff's domain - the rolling fairways alongside Interstate 581 on the outskirts of Roanoke - would be safe from the troubles at Dominion and other employers. That is emphatically not the case. His club anticipates a stinging financial blow, in large part because many members of a group of 50 bank employees won't be coming by to play golf together once a week this season.
"We'll pretty much lose the Dominion league," Poff said. "Just Dominion alone will ballpark $25,000. It was the strongest league we had."
Countryside's total loss from economy-related cutbacks in golf, swimming and tennis could be between $50,000 and $100,000, Poff said.
Layoffs probably won't be necessary at the club itself, he said, but the position of assistant golf pro may be left vacant, and there will have to be other economies as well.
"I'll have to budget my labor a little better than before," Poff said. "I'll have to pretty much run the show without having people to help me."
Employees of the nearby Dominion operations center accounted for about 50 of Linda Kelley's customers at the Blue Jean Hair Saloon on Williamson Road. About half a dozen already have moved to Charlotte. She expects to lose another 10 to 15 when they're transferred or "separated" - the euphemism for fired - later in the year.
"It's scary," said Kelley, whose four operators all work on commission.
Among her customers are soon-to-be-former Dominion employees Barbara and Blaine Martin and their sons, ages 4 and 2. The Martins have never worked anywhere else. They want to stay in their native Roanoke Valley, but don't know whether they'll be able to find jobs.
In the meantime, Barbara Martin said, "we're having to watch what we spend. You have to stop and think before you buy anything."
They have postponed buying furniture for a home addition that was completed about when the Dominion sellout was announced. This year's trip to the beach may be another casualty.
There's a bit of that going around this spring.
Jeff Hummel, the AAA Travel Agency manager, was unreservedly upbeat on grounds that "People are somehow gonna find a way to get away; it's important to them." But others in a random sample were braced for something worse.
"Absolutely," said Travelmasters' Gene Schwartz when asked whether he expects business to be affected by economic setbacks in the region. He's hoping, however, to ride out the storm without having to reduce his own staff.
"I'm going to approach it optimistically," the veteran Roanoke travel agent said.
Candy Tomlinson, manager of Hopkins Travel Inc., is likewise crossing her fingers. She expects a decline in corporate bookings, but hopes that leisure travel will sustain the agency until the worst is over.
If not, she said, staff adjustments are "conceivable."