ROANOKE TIMES  
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, May 2, 1996                  TAG: 9605020032
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B-8  EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
      Published correction ran on May 3, 1996.
         John Pecaric's name was misspelled in a Business page story Thursday.
      He is manager of the Roanoke County plant being built by R.R. Donnelley 
      & Sons Co.

ROANOKE COUNTY SET ITS `SITES,' MEETING DONNELLEY'S DEADLINE

``IT'S A TIME FOR CELEBRATION, recognition and one heck of a sigh of relief," said County Supervisor Bob Johnson as the finished site was shown off Wednesday.

It cost $1.5 million and involved hauling 165,346 cubic yards of rock and dirt to make a rolling piece of farmland into a flat industrial tract.

But Roanoke County met its deadline for producing a site for the first phase of R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co.'s $63 million printing plant and book factory.

"Let's get it on," County Supervisor Bob Johnson told Donnelley plant manager John Pacaric on Wednesday afternoon, when the finished site - featuring mountain views in all directions - was shown to the news media.

"It's a time for celebration, recognition and one heck of a sigh of relief" that the county has met its contractual obligations with Donnelley to have the Valley TechPark site ready for building within a month, Johnson said.

Work on the western Roanoke County site - planned by T.P. Parker & Sons of Salem and Froehling & Robertson Inc. of Roanoke - was actually completed April 24, a week ahead of schedule. Thomas Brothers Inc. of Salem did the work, which took 2,980 manhours.

The cost was $400,000 less than expected. That will reduce the county's total contribution to the project, which also includes extending water and sewer lines and training workers, to $2.1 million, said County Administrator Elmer Hodge.

Pacaric said Donnelley hopes to have a contract signed with a primary contractor for the building by next Wednesday. The company has narrowed its choice to two firms, one from the Roanoke Valley. The other was identified simply as from a neighboring state.

Construction should begin on the 300,000-square-foot building by June 1, and it should be ready to receive $50 million in new printing equipment by Dec. 15, Pacaric said. The Chicago-based company needs to begin book production by next May, he said, or it will miss next year's July-September printing cycle, a key production time in the book industry.

The plant will print trade books and how-to publications such as cookbooks and gardening books. It will produce them economically in small quantities - 20,000 copies or fewer - something the $6.5 billion annual sales company's other printing plants cannot do.

Including Pacaric, Donnelley has seven employees in the Roanoke Valley, working in temporary offices at the county administration building. The plant is expected to employ 175 after full production begins. A second, $39 million phase, expected to be completed in 1999, would add 137 more jobs.

LENGTH: Medium:   59 lines
ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC:  Map. color.