According to the Thursday edition of the Saltville Progress Engineered Products of Virginia will locate in Saltville’s second shell building. That shell building has been vacant since it was finished in 1998. The company plans to hire 16 people and invest $363,000 and will only use 30% of the 40,000 square feet building. Saltville presently is spending $505,000 to make the building ready for the company and up to two more companies.

The paper goes on to report hat Saltville will be loosing some $3,300 a month unless they can get two more tenants to locate in the building. Saltville has better watch out with this one. The town is spending a lot of money to fix up a place for one business with the hope of two more locating. This is a pretty risky measure I think. Any new industry is good, but one that will employee only 16 and use 30% of the building is somewhat a risk taking prospect.

On a somewhat unrelated note, rumor has it that the building has been used as a hay barn since no other use could be found for it until now. If it is true that was a mighty expensive hay barn. I remember a couple years back of hearing a story where town employees supposedly were dispatched to get all the hay out of the building as quickly as possible when a corporate team was in Saltville checking out the facilities. Rumor also has it they were provided a police escort to the site, probably to slow them down so that the hay could be removed.

We’ll have to wait and see where this one goes. Let us hope it turns out favorably and the town can fill up the building.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 13th, 2005 at 11:51 pm and is filed under Smyth County. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.