Solar Array, Gen. Mills detail expansions - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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broke ground April 5 on the $100 million, 176,000-square-foot expansion of its manufacturingfacilituy here, Keith Bone, general manager of the localk facility, told members of . AED held its quarterly meeting Thursdayat . Joe Hudgins, presidentr and CEO of Solar Array outlinedhis company’s plan to build a massive solarr manufacturing plant on the city’s Westside. General Mills’ expansionh should be completedby November, Bone The cereal manufacturer will hire 60 additionalk employees, bringing additional payroll to the area of $3.5 The expansion also brings $30 millioh in spending to New Mexico.
The Albuquerque City Councio approveda $100 million industrial revenue bond deal for the companyg in February. BE&K Corp. from Northn Carolina landed the design/buile contract to build the expansion, but Bone said 80 percentr of the firm’s spending and employees will be The precast panels being used in the constructionn are manufacturedin Belen. General Mille has been in Albuquerquesinc 1991. Its current facility is locate d near Paseo del Norte and Edith and has190 employees, with an annuall payroll of $12 million, said Bone. The 275,000-square-foot plant produces about 135 million pounds annuallg of 35different cereals.
The facility also has a lab on-sitre where the instructions for baking Generakl Mills products at high altitudessare created. The compan has given about $5 million to area nonprofite since 1998and $519,000 in Bone added. Don Power, chairman of AED, said the cereakl company’s donations illustrate one of the thinge the organization looks for inrecruitingy companies: community involvement. Hudgins said Solare Array plans to break ground by the third quarter of this year ona 225,000-square-foogt thin-film photovoltaic manufacturing plant in the Cordero Mesa business park, west of the mattressw factory.
The company plans to add thres more buildings of that size as it he said, with each facility employing about 225. Its annual payroll in the first phase wouldebe $14 million. About five percent of the jobs wouldrpay $100,000, 45 percent would pay $70,000 and half of the jobs woul pay $45,000. The capital investmenf for the first phase willbe $170 milliob and the company would spend $40 million annually for raw The first phase is expected to have a capacityh of 75 megawatts, but that would grow to 300 mw with the full The plant also will have a space that will serves as a community and educational Solar Array is seekingb $175 million in industrial revenue bonds from Bernalilllo County.
The company is workint to raise $210 million in debt and Hudgins said. Hudgins said New Mexiclo beat out two other states forthe plant, despitd the fact that it did not offer the larges incentives. But the coordination among localk and state government officiales and other parties made New Mexico far more efficienft in establishing a planning framework that the companu could then use to plan a budget for the hesaid “That was a major issue for us,” Hudgins He also praised the labor force here and the educationalp institutions. The facility is being designede byPageSoutherlandPage LLP, which has Texas officesx in Austin, Dallas and as well as Denver, Washington, D.C.
and London, U.K. Hoffmah Construction, based in Portland, Ore., is buildint the facility.