Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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March 6, 2011

Closure of Flowers Baking Company: Far-reaching consequences

GREG JORDAN Bluefield Daily Telegraph

PRINCETON — Fewer working people, a manufacturer’s building being vacated and a future reduction in tax revenue are among the consequences area leaders are facing now that a major employer is ceasing production.

Flowers Baking Company announced March 1 that operations were being shut down at its bakery off U.S. Route 52 near Bluefield as of March 5. The closing  affected 164 employees. Company officials said the bakery was old and had outdated equipment, and that the building didn’t have the space to accommodate new machines without reconstruction.

A “rapid response team” from the state agency Work Force West Virginia was sent to Mercer County to help the laid-off workers find new employment. Meanwhile, work is underway to find a new tenant for the Flowers building, said Executive Director Janet Bailey of the Development Authority of Mercer County.

“What we’ll do is work with the state, and the state provides a very nice brochure — a marketing brochure — and place it on our web site and send it out, and the state will have it on theirs (web site),” Bailey said. “And it will be sent to everybody looking for a building that size and with those specifications. We’ll do everything we can to fill that building as quickly as we can.”

Bailey said there were no prospective tenants yet for the building.

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” she said. “We’re not sure how long it will take before Flowers removes all their equipment.”

During the last year, other vacant buildings have been taken over by new tenants. One example is the Carter Machinery operation now at the former Lowes store building in Green Valley, Bailey said. The former Eimco building in Brushfork now houses Industrial Plating Building No. 2, and there have been expansions with Custom Manufacturing at a former car lot on Rogers Street in Princeton.

In the Cumberland Industrial Park near Bluefield, the Noland company stayed in Mercer County by moving from John Nash Boulevard to the park, Bailey said. Another company, McCure Johnson, has moved to the park from Pennsylvania.

“We have local businesses looking to expand, and they’re looking for buildings,” she said.

Meanwhile, the county has to contend both with the loss of employed people who contributed to the local economy and the loss of tax revenue the bakery provided.

“That’s absolutely devastating,” County Clerk Verlin Moye said of the jobs lost. “It’s devastating whether it’s 100 jobs or 10 jobs. It (closing) covers a lot of people and it impacts a lot of money in the county.”

Some properties such as hospitals are exempt from paying property taxes, but Flowers Bakery was not one of these properties, Moye said.

“That’s certainly going to have a negative impact on our tax base. Based on last year’s returns, it’s right at $81,000 in personal property revenue and $25,600 in real estate lost revenue. At the very least, that’s $105,000 in actual revenue that we’re not going to get,” he said.

The county hopes to find another business to take over the building, said Joe Coburn, president of the Mercer County Commission.

“We’re going to talk about it and see what we can do,” he said. “I think we can handle it, but we hate to see the 164 people go.”

The commission did not yet have plans to adjust the county’s budget in light of the tax revenue that would be lost.

“We’ll be discussing that a whole lot,” Coburn said.

Finding a new tenant for the building is a possiblity other business people in the county want to explore.

“If something went in there, maybe not a bakery, that would be good,” said Robert Farley, president of the Princeton-Mercer County Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve got a lot of these small machine shops around here. One could jump into a bigger building and grow their business. It might be an opportunity for somebody.”

While the bakery is located near Bluefield, its employees came from a broad area, said Marc Meachum, president of the Greater Bluefield Chamber of Commerce.

“We were talking about it this morning,” Meachum said. “Some drove 20 or more miles to work. It impacts a much larger area than Bluefield. I would be willing to hazard a guess that 30 percent or more came from Virginia. It’s just a very tough and sad situation.”

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