Dell looks to leave mark on Triad

A $37.2 million incentive package from Forsyth County helped lure a new Dell manufacturing plant last month to the Alliance Science and Technology Park.

After Dell accepted a 20-year, $242.5 million incentive plan from the N.C. General Assembly in November, an incentive battle raged on between Davidson, Forsyth and Guilford counties.

“Winston-Salem’s Alliance Park location is best suited to bringing our new operation online in time to meet growing customer needs, providing good proximity to an available workforce and supporting our logistics objectives,” said Ro Parra, senior vice president and general manager of Dell USA, in a Dec. 22 press release.

The county competition was brought about by the possibility of new jobs in the struggling manufacturing industry.

Other offers from Triad-area governments included Greensboro and Guilford County’s combined $12.4 million.

Davidson County offered $23.1 million, including $1.5 million in potential land costs.

The Dell plant will employ 700 people, a number which will rise to 1,500 in the next five years, according to a Dell press release.

Dell plans for the Forsyth County facility to eventually be its largest in the United States, said Debra Conrad-Shrader, vice chairwoman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners.

A contractor has yet to be named for the 500,000-square-foot plant, which tentatively will open fall 2005.

Several Forsyth County area contractors are waiting, hoping a local company will be chosen for the job.

“(Dell) has made a commitment to use a local contractor whenever possible,” said Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines.

Area officials are hopeful the Dell plant will boost the economy, not only through new jobs, but also through the attraction of new companies.

“Approximately two- to three-thousand indirect jobs will be created,” Joines said.

Peripheral companies are expected to follow the $100 million desktop computer assembly plant to the Triad.

“It will be giving us national exposure,” Conrad-Shrader said. “I think it will just provide a lot of momentum.”

But some say the price of national exposure was too high.

Sen. Hamilton Horton Jr., R-Forsyth, said both the state and local governments paid too much considering the lack of competition for the plant.

“We were the only game in town,” he said.

The other candidate for the plant was Virginia, which would have offered between $33 million and $37 million. But the state never proposed a serious deal.

Horton said the new jobs will not pay as much as standard wages in Forsyth County.

“It will hopefully provide 1,500 jobs, which we will have paid $186,000 a piece for.”

Dell will start hiring for jobs in its new plant in April.

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.