One of Durham's low-income areas received an economic boost Wednesday, as a local manufacturer announced that it has purchased an abandoned factory that it plans to renovate into a new "East Village Corporate Center."
Julio Cordoba, the owner of the electronics manufacturing firm Valcor, Inc., and his brother Joe purchased the old International Paper facility, located in Northeast Central Durham.
Cordoba said Valcor will spend $1.3 million to renovate the 170,000-square-foot building before moving its own operations there and renting out industrial and office space to other potential tenants.
Cordoba also announced a likely first tenant, Ariel Technologies, another electronics manufacturing company.
Ariel CEO Jerry Dry said there is a "pretty high probability" that his firm will move to the facility.
In addition to Valcor and Ariel, which will take up manufacturing and warehouse space on the first floor of the facility, Cordoba said other businesses and nonprofits--including the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, of which he is a member--may fill office space on the second and third floors of the building.
Local government and business leaders hailed the move as an opportunity to bring jobs and economic activity to a neighborhood that suffered when factories like International Paper and the adjacent Golden Belt complex, which is now being used as the city's Center for Employment Training, closed several years ago.
"It is so easy to look at an area like Northeast Central Durham and say you can't do it," Mayor Pro Tempore Lewis Cheek said. "You're showing the state of North Carolina that you can in fact do it."
The area has been a major focus of the city's community development initiatives, including business tax incentives that Cheek said could have totaled approximately $30,000 in Valcor's case.
Valcor will provide about 40 job opportunities in technology-related fields over the next two years, Cordoba said.
Abdul Qadir of Ariel Technologies said his company could hire up to 70 such employees over a similar time period.
Cordoba said employees would need technical skills, but pointed out that residents of the neighborhood could still benefit from the job opportunities through the Center for Employment Training next door.
"We will begin to hire some of these people that they are training," he said.
County Commissioner Ellen Reckhow added that graduates of a technology training program at Riverside High School might also be able to fill those positions.
Deborah Giles, chair of the political subcommittee of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, was optimistic about the facility's potential to help the neighborhood. "If the community takes ownership of this project, then... it's a win-win for everybody," she said.
Giles cautioned, however, that the community will not benefit unless Valcor makes local residents aware of the potential jobs.
"They say they have folks who live in Northeast Central Durham participating in their training programs," Giles said. "[But] many people aren't interested in it because they don't know the opportunity exists."
Local leaders also said the facility would help the property tax base of both the city and county.
"This is a double boost for the tax base, and that's really great," Reckhow said. "This type of investment is what smart growth is all about. We're recycling an old building; the infrastructure is here."
She added that the move represents the kind of private investment in and around downtown needed to balance the public funding that the city and county are putting toward downtown revitalization.
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