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Tag: Cane Creek Centre

Paver manufacturer to invest $47M for Pittsylvania facility

Cambridge Pavers, a New Jersey-based manufacturer of pavers, slabs and wall systems, will invest $47.35 million to establish a 150,000-square-foot facility at Ringgold East Industrial Park in Pittsylvania County, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Friday.

Virginia competed with North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, and Massachusetts for the project, which is expected to create 55 jobs.  

Cambridge Pavers, which boasts seven other manufacturing facilities and employs 370 workers, manufactures hardscape products for patios, landscaping and pool decks. Cambridge paving stones are made with the company’s trademarked ArmorTec, a proprietary mix of sand, aggregate, cement, pigment and a limited amount of water, making the stones stronger than poured concrete and skid- and slip-resistant, according to the company.

“Cambridge Pavers’ decision to establish its first manufacturing facility outside New Jersey in Pittsylvania County demonstrates the commonwealth’s competitive advantages for manufacturers,” Youngkin said in a statement.

Ringgold East Industrial Park is located just outside Danville and adjacent to Cane Creek Centre, a 900-acre industrial park jointly owned by the City of Danville and Pittsylvania County.

Cambridge Pavers, which was founded by Charles H. Gamarekian in 1994, will be hiring technical, manufacturing and customer service workers in Pittsylvania. The average pay of the positions will be $58,151 annually, according to Steve Oberfield, vice president at Cambridge Pavers.

He estimates the facility will be operational in 18 to 24 months.

“This expansion represents a significant milestone in the continued evolution of Cambridge Pavers, reinforcing our commitment to innovation, precision and excellence in every aspect of our business,” Gamarekian, founder and CEO of Cambridge Pavers, said in a statement.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Pittsylvania County and the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance to secure the manufacturing facility. Youngkin approved a $220,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, a deal-closing fund employed at a governor’s discretion to incentivize a company moving to or expanding in the commonwealth, to assist Pittsylvania County with the project.

Additionally, Cambridge Pavers will receive support from the Virginia Talent Accelerator Program, a program, created by the VEDP in collaboration with higher education partners, that provides recruitment and training services at no cost to the companies served.

Last month, Tennessee-based Microporous announced plans to invest $1.3 billion to build its battery separator manufacturing facility at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania, a project expected to create 2,015 jobs.

In September, Youngkin announced that education consulting company TECHnista, which develops curriculum for K-12 programs for defense and advanced manufacturing industries, planned to invest about $1.56 million to establish a National Training and Technology Center at the Ringgold East Industrial Park. Netherlands-based paper honeycomb producer Axxor, which began production in Ringgold in 2012, is also located in the park.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the project’s timeline and other details.  

Van maker repays state grant after Pittsylvania layoffs

Morgan Olson has paid back a $500,000 Virginia Port Authority grant after the Michigan-based manufacturer of walk-in step vans failed to employ an agreed-upon number of workers at its facility at the Cane Creek Centre Industrial Park in Pittsylvania County.

It’s not the jubilant future economic developers had envisioned when celebrating the company’s October 2019 announcement of plans to invest $57.8 million to bring its operations to a former Ikea facility at the park located outside Danville. At that time, the company, which is a business unit of Texas-based JB Poindexter & Co., expected to create 703 jobs.

By summer 2020, Morgan Olson had its 925,000-square-foot automotive manufacturing facility operating in Pittsylvania.

Two years later, the Port of Virginia awarded Morgan Olson a $500,000 Port of Virginia Economic and Infrastructure Development Grant, an incentive designed to encourage businesses to locate maritime-related employment centers in the commonwealth or to expand existing facilities. At that time, the company was well on its way to building its promised workforce in Virginia. The Pittsylvania facility employed 612 workers in October 2022, according to a news report.

But circumstances change. Morgan Olson laid off 435 employees at Cane Creek Centre in 2023 and an additional 130 this August, according to the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. Currently, there’s only “limited staff there in the facility,” according to Matt Rowe, director of economic development for Pittsylvania County.

On Sept. 25, Stephen Edwards, CEO and executive director of the Virginia Port Authority, which runs the Port of Virginia, sent a letter to Greg Pairitz, vice president and chief financial officer of Morgan Olson, asking for the state grant to be repaid due to failure to comply with “one of more” obligations agreed to in a memorandum of understanding.

“The VPA has determined that Morgan Olson has failed to maintain at least 25 new, permanent full-time positions prior to the performance date of June, 30, 2025,” the letter states.

Edwards gave Morgan Olson 60 days to repay the money. The company repaid the funds on Nov. 20, according to Joe Harris, a spokesperson for the VPA.

A request for comment to a spokesperson for Morgan Olson was not immediately returned.

Rowe on Tuesday remained optimistic about the situation.

“I think the fact that Morgan Olson just came and immediately paid back the $500,000 to Virginia is a very strong testament to them as a company,” he said. “I think it also speaks very strongly to their financial well-being and [to] their commitment to Virginia.”

Rowe speculated that the Morgan Olson facility could have a second chapter. “There’s certain contracts that can’t be publicly discussed that Morgan Olson is negotiating,” he says.

If the Cane Creek facility isn’t occupied by the van maker, Rowe suggested JB Poindexter & Co. could find another use for it.

“The value proposition to the parent company is just too strong for them to not utilize that space,” he says.

In regular talks with Morgan Olson leaders, Rowe said, “they have stressed over and over again that they’re committed to this community, to this facility.”

Rowe speculated that the layoffs were due to Morgan Olson losing a key client. The popularity of electric vehicles and high interest rates, he thinks, could also have impacted customer demand for the company’s custom commercial step vans.

“When the interest rates are high, you tend to make do with what you have, or repair what you have, instead of going and buying something,” he says.

A 2019 announcement about the facility noted Morgan Olson was eligible for several state and local grants, including a $7 million custom performance grant from the General Assembly’s Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission and $1.195 million from the Tobacco Region Opportunity Fund.

Jordan Butler, public relations director for the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, said on Wednesday that the commission paid $770,775 of those funds to Morgan Olson in May 2024 for creating 561 jobs. Company leaders could have requested the remainder of the funds at the end of September, he noted, if they had created 703 jobs at the Pittsylvania County facility. 

The commission changed grant agreements several years ago, Butler added, to require that the created jobs are maintained throughout the performance period and are only dispersed once at the end of the performance period. “So good news is that that this situation couldn’t occur again,” he said.

A spokesperson for VEDP did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information about the Tobacco Regional Opportunity Fund. 

Hand-built electric classic sports cars to be built in Danville

RBW Sports & Classics, a United Kingdom manufacturer of hand-built electric vehicles that have designs inspired by British sports cars from the 1960s and 1970s, plans to invest $8 million to establish a manufacturing facility at Cane Creek Centre in Danville, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Thursday. 

The project is expected to create 144 jobs. Those workers will produce RBW’s first left-hand drive, electric Roadster and GT models for the U.S. market. 

Peter Swain founded the company — which is named after his children, Rose, Becs and Wesley — in 2017. 

“Already selling in Europe, Asia and even Bermuda, the new facility in Virginia supports RBW’s entry to the U.S. market,” Swain, who is CEO, said in a statement. 

RBW delivered its first cars in 2022 and opened its first factory in the United Kingdom in 2023. The company currently manufactures electric Roadster and GT models, and its electric vehicle architecture and systems can be installed under other body shells.

The company unveiled its left-hand drive Roadster and GT models at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in California, which ran from Aug. 15 to Aug. 18. Starting prices for RBW cars run between $139,000 to $151,000.

In July, Swain, who previously worked in security systems, was featured in a Financial Times article about whether the United Kingdom’s Labour Party should develop an industrial strategy. In the article, Swain noted more incentives are available in the United States for business owners. “We can get so much help everywhere — apart from in our own backyard,” he told the Financial Times.

The Cane Creek Centre is jointly owned by the City of Danville and Pittsylvania County. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Pittsylvania County, the City of Danville, the Danville-Pittsylvania County Regional Industrial Facility Authority and the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance to secure the project for Virginia.

Youngkin approved a $500,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist Danville and Pittsylvania County with this project. The Virginia Jobs Investment Program will also provide funding and services to support employee training activities.

AeroFarms plants roots in Cane Creek Centre

AeroFarms won’t harvest the first crops at its new Cane Creek Centre facility until summer, but the company is already expanding.

In December 2019, the Newark, New Jersey-based indoor agriculture company announced it would invest $42 million and create 92 jobs in the 136,000-square-foot facility building in the industrial park owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County. Now the company has upped that to $53 million and as many as 150 jobs.

“We’re seeing so much interest and demand, we’re thinking about how can we service that by expanding our workforce,” says Marc Oshima, AeroFarms cofounder and chief marketing officer.

Those jobs, says Pittsylvania County Economic Director Matt Rowe, will pay a collective $4 million to $5 million annually.

AeroFarms will grow and harvest short-stemmed leafy greens, herbs and microgreens and process them for shipping to retail outlets and restaurants within 250 to 300 miles — “from seed to package under one roof,” Oshima says. The vegetables, nurtured with efficient lighting, a mist of water and nutrients, grow in a patented cloth medium made out of natural fiber. The proprietary system uses up to 95% less water than outdoor farming and no pesticides. Because growing conditions are optimized and another growing season can begin almost as soon as one ends, the system can be up to 390 times more productive than growing the same plants outside, the company says.

“It’s really writing a new playbook in agriculture,” Oshima says.

AeroFarms chose Cane Creek Centre because it’s within a day’s drive of 50 million potential customers.

AeroFarms is a B corporation, meaning it’s certified as a for-profit company committed to transparency and social and environmental responsibility.

That mission includes giving formerly incarcerated people a second chance. “We owe them an opportunity to help address recidivism [and] provide career opportunities,” Oshima says.

In Newark, AeroFarms put working farms in schools, senior centers, community centers, even City Hall. The company plans to do the same sort of thing in Virginia. “The ambition is to extend these community farms into the communities that we operate in,” Oshima says, “so people have an opportunity to be hands-on with their growing and appreciate where their food’s coming from.”

Rowe seems convinced AeroFarms is a good catch.

“It’s great news to bring in companies,” he says. “It’s better news to bring in companies that have a history of watching out and taking part in the community.”