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Gaston County, N.C., To Get $54 Million Dole Food-Processing Plant

Posted on: Wednesday, 3 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

Aug. 3--State lawmakers who rushed through an extension of tax breaks for new businesses last month delivered for a second time Tuesday: a $54 million food processing plant expected to employ about 850 people in Gaston County.

State leaders and Dole Food of Westlake Village, Calif., confirmed that the company will build a vegetable packing factory in Bessemer City, just west of Charlotte. Last week, The Cheesecake Factory announced plans for a $16 million bakery that is to employ 500 people in Rocky Mount.

Tuesday's announcement cheered state and local officials who praised the use of tax-funded incentives to lure the fruit-and-vegetable producer and its jobs to Gaston. The former textile hub has bled 15,000 manufacturing jobs since 1995, when factories began moving overseas in search of cheaper labor. In June, the county's unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, compared to the statewide average of 5.3 percent.

Dole, which said it had considered sites outside North Carolina, will be eligible for $6.5 million in state grants and tax breaks. The company also could get at least $2 million more in additional state and county incentives, including infrastructure improvements, assistance with site expenses and property tax relief.

"Dole's decision to locate in Gaston County is a win for the county and the community because it means hundreds of jobs for hundreds of hard-working North Carolina families at a time when they need them," Gov. Mike Easley said. "We viewed this as an opportunity to replace some of the textile jobs that foreign trade policies continue to export overseas."

The Dole and Cheesecake Factory announcements came two week after the General Assembly's last-minute extension of the William S. Lee Act, the state's nine-year-old incentives program that was to expire at the end of this year. The Lee Act extension, which Easley signed Friday, grants businesses that relocate or expand in the state tax credits based on job creation targets.

Easley said Dole may yet announce more jobs. He said the company, which did not return phone calls, is considering a frozen-fruit processing plant in North Carolina. A Department of Commerce spokesman said that possibility is not imminent, and declined to say how many jobs it might create.

"We just hope bringing this company and worldwide name to North Carolina is the beginning of what will be even more significant investments in the future," Assistant Secretary of Commerce Tony Copeland said.

To receive all the incentives for which it is eligible, Dole must create 525 jobs at the Gaston plant within three years, and a total of 856 by 2016.

Dole, the world's largest fruit and vegetable producer with $5.3 billion in revenue last year, originally planned the facility for Kannapolis, about 40 miles to the northeast. But after local officials there declined a request for free land, the company reset its sights on Gaston County.

Dole is owned by David Murdock, who once owned Cannon Mills, a predecessor corporation to Pillowtex, the Kannapolis-based textile company that closed its doors two years ago, throwing 4,800 people out of work in the largest mass layoff in state history.

Copeland said Dole's pledge to rely heavily on North Carolina growers of vegetables, fruit and possibly dairy products will assist the state's farmers as they make the transition from a reliance on tobacco.

Gaston County is expected to approve as much as $2 million to subsidize the price of land and provide tax breaks to Dole over the next 10 years.

Other incentives include $750,000 from the state Department of Transportation for road construction, and $500,000 from the One North Carolina Fund for meeting job-growth targets.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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CAKE,

Source: The News & Observer

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