There’s still no word from an unnamed local company as to whether it will remain in Mount Airy after being granted a generous incentive package including the donation of 25 acres of land at Westwood Industrial Park.
Such an announcement had been anticipated in early July by officials including Surry County Economic Development Partnership (EDP) President/CEO Blake Moyer.
“We’re still in the same situation we were a couple of weeks ago,” Moyer said Wednesday in updating the situation.
“Still officially the same spot we were at — nothing bad or nothing good,” Moyer added regarding the range of possible responses from the company involved.
“Just in a holding pattern.”
The company is said to be a well-established local entity employing 60-plus people, whose possible relocation to a new plant that would be constructed at Westwood Industrial Park has been assigned the code name “Project Vista.”
This was done to avoid possible competition from other communities for the development opportunity.
Project Vista is motivated by the fact that the company involved, in operation more than 40 years, lacks its own building, now leases one and needs to move.
The Mount Airy Board of Commissioners approved an incentive package on June 20 which includes a property tax abatement amounting to 80 percent of new levies that would be paid annually over eight years, in addition to the land donation.
That’s based on a capital investment of at least $70 million, possibly as much as $80 million, by the industry for the expansion/relocation. The city’s action was on top of an incentive deal approved by the Surry County commissioners including a cash grant to the company of about $2.6 million, to be recouped through property tax revenues over a period of nearly six years.
That company would build a 140,000-square-foot facility at the city-owned industrial park and retain the 60-plus jobs.
At least that’s what local officials hope will happen.
“This is a competitive project — this company is actively seeking options in other communities,” Moyer, the EDP official, said during a public hearing on the city incentive package preceding the June 20 decision by the Mount Airy commissioners.
”Looks very positive”
In commenting Wednesday on the present status of Project Vista, Moyer indicated that citizens shouldn’t read too much into the fact the industry in question has not readily announced its expansion plans in the wake of the incentives approvals.
Such a company might require approval from a board of directors or jump through other hoops before making that kind of decision.
The fact the issue has arisen during the Fourth of July and summer vacation period also could be a factor, the economic-development official agreed.
“It still looks very positive,” Moyer said of the prospects for the industry to remain here as opposed to moving elsewhere.
“We’re definitely in the game.”
Moyer hopes an announcement will come within the next month.
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