ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 24, 1996 TAG: 9602270076
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on February 28, 1996.
The Chicago-based printing firms planning to build a plant in Roanoke
County is R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co. The name was misspelled in an
editorial Saturday.
R. R. DONNELLY & Sons' decision to open a book-printing plant west of Salem is good news for Roanoke County, for the Roanoke Valley and for the region beyond.
For the region, the good news is the promise of jobs paying $9 to $17 an hour. The Chicago-based company is to employ 175 at the new plant by the end of 1997, with the possibility of someday employing as many as 750.
For the valley, the good news is the pending arrival of a Fortune 500 corporate citizen, with an established history of profitable growth and a clean environmental record. Donnelly's planned two-phase capital investment of $102 million should boost the valley's economy, which is a single entity even if the valley's local governments are not.
For the county, the good news is tax-base expansion. In bedroom communities like the county, with its thousands of residents commuting to work daily in other localities, mainly Roanoke city, this is no small matter. Residential real estate, unlike commercial and industrial, typically costs more in services than it yields in taxes. The new Donnelly plant will nudge the tax-base ratio a bit in the industrial direction.
Credit the work of local and regional economic-development officials and of Gov. George Allen, whose administration has brought new vigor to the jobs recruitment effort. Credit, too, the availability of a prepared site in the county-owned Valley Techpark and an incentives package that helped make the difference. Land availability and incentives are both tricky issues that in this instance worked out - but that raise caution flags for the future.
The site has been earmarked for industry at least since 1990, when it looked for a while as if Allied Signal would build an automobile disc-brake factory there. But new industrial sites in the county may prove harder to come by. Already, county residents are resisting suggested rezonings lest they bring unwanted industrial intrusions into rural and residential areas.
They may have cause to resist. But the implications of relying on a residential tax base also should be recognized: acceptance of higher taxes, of downgraded county services - or, to escape the dilemma, of a strategic, more intimate relationship and joint planning with other localities, especially Roanoke city, than merely the ad hoc cooperation that now prevails.
The region, not just the county, needs ready sites to attract investment and jobs. Revenue calculations, too, would be better if made regionally.
As localities and states compete for jobs, incentives have become de rigeur - though they raise uncomfortable questions about the proper role of government in influencing marketplace decisions, about who gets subsidized and who doesn't. The most questionable portions of this transaction are the state's tax credit of $190,000 and the county's donation of the land, with an assessed value of $612,500, for the plant.
The credit, however, is one-time-only, and the land reverts to county ownership if Donnelly backs out. The bulk of the subsidy is for infrastructure improvements and assistance in worker training - items that are traditionally within government's purview, and that add to the county's physical and human-resource capital, not just Donnelly's.
Meanwhile, don't forget that Donnelly officials also cited as factors in their decision the Roanoke Valley's location, capable work force, reasonable costs of doing business and quality of life. In the long run, such items of general and regional benefit do most to sustain a healthy economy.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB