State provides warm welcome for Dell Inc.

WINSTON-SALEM — Legislators and businessmen from across the state gathered Wednesday to celebrate a new beginning in business.

During a ground breaking ceremony for a new Dell Inc. manufacturing facility, many city officials and Dell representatives expressed their excitement.

Gov. Mike Easley was slated to attend, but he did not make an appearance due to illness.

The ceremony marks the beginning of construction on a $100 million, 527,000-square-foot facility for Dell and comes one day after Fortune Magazine declared Dell to be America’s Most Admired Company.

The new facility will create many new jobs in Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, said Travis Simpson, vice president of Dell Inc. manufacturing operations.

With initial openings for about 200 workers, the company expects to create about 1,500 total jobs within its first five years in the state, making this the largest Dell plant in the world, Simpson said.

North Carolina was picked to house the new facility for two reasons, said Dick Hunter, vice president of Dell Americas manufacturing operations.

“North Carolina is the best spot on the East Coast, and it has a good people base,” he said.

Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines expressed his enthusiasm for the project, saying the city can now “look to what we can become, not what we were.”

Still, some legislators are concerned about the 20-year, $242.5 million incentive plan for Dell passed last November by the N.C. General Assembly. These legislators want to make sure the state gets back what it’s putting into the company.

But Joines said he is confident that the incentive package will be nothing but beneficial to the citizens of Winston-Salem.

“We have a clear vision of where we are taking our economy,” he said.

In gratitude to Dell, Joines presented a key to the city of Winston-Salem to Dell Americas Senior Vice President Ro Parra.

Parra said the presentation was “humbling” and expressed his excitement about the new facility.

Don Flow, chairman of Winston-Salem Business Inc., said he is eager for Dell to open in the area.

“It is a great day for Winston-Salem, Forsyth County, the Piedmont Triad and North Carolina,” Flow said. “This demonstrates our community has a bright confident future.”

But Robert Tucker, a 70-year-old Winston-Salem resident, who sold 20 acres of his land to the project, said he wasn’t looking forward to Dell’s presence.

“I’d rather they weren’t around,” he said. “I decided I turned 70 years old and I’d put the money in the bank.”

But the general response to the new facility was optimistic.

N.C. Secretary of Commerce Jim Fain, who represented Easley, said North Carolina and Dell will be “great partners.”

“North Carolina’s future is certainly looking good today,” he said.

The event concluded with many prominent company and state officials donning hard hats and digging the first few shovel-fulls of dirt from the site.

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