Members of the Mount Airy Board of Commissioners, the mayor and city manager discuss various issues at a planning retreat Thursday.
It had been announced in September that the defense contractor based in the Vesta community of Patrick County had chosen Ararat, Va., for the location of a company expansion rather than Mount Airy.
Officials in both Patrick County and Surry County had tried to land the new facility, but in the end, Virginia proved “more competitive and more aggressive,” John Marcaccio, the president of Aerial Machine and Tool, has said.
However, growth of the company — coupled with a renewed recruitment effort by two members of the Mount Airy Board of Commissioners — could lead to an Aerial expansion in the city after all, based on a disclosure Thursday during the retreat. City officials are conducting the two-day retreat, which ends this afternoon, at Bank of America in order to plan next year’s budget and address other needs.
During opening remarks by the various municipal leaders attending, Commissioner Dean Brown announced that recent contacts had been made with Marcaccio in an effort to have Aerial reconsider placing an operation in Mount Airy. “It looks like a very positive thing,” Brown said.
In a follow-up interview afterward, the North Ward commissioner said that “he (Marcaccio) was very open to the subject — very open to it.”
When asked what the next step might be to make such an expansion a reality, Brown replied, “He’s waiting on a government contract.”
Marcaccio, who lives in Mount Airy, confirmed that possibility in a telephone interview Thursday night. “We’re working on some new projects that maybe would necessitate some expansion,” the Aerial official said.
“We just got the Ararat facility going in the last few months and it’s going exceptionally well,” Marcaccio said, adding that employees there are “working overtime.”
Evidence of that success is the fact that the company intended to hire only 30 people for its new satellite plant in a leased building at 3550 Ararat Highway across the state line. But it now has 60, who along with 10 others at Aerial’s Vesta location are engaged in the manufacture of fire-suppression kits for military transport vehicles to protect their fuel tanks if hit by an enemy attack.
Aerial Machine and Tool has 270 workers at both Patrick County locations.
While Marcaccio acknowledged Thursday night that “it’s probably too early to say anything” at this point about any expansion to Mount Airy, he added that with developments under way which could increase production needs, “Who knows, we might need more space.”
Such a necessity would not allow time for building a new facility, meaning the company would seek an existing structure, of which Mount Airy has plenty due to past industrial departures.
“We’re certainly going to consider Mount Airy,” Marcaccio said, adding that this would be a good fit since the company deals with numerous vendors here.
Brown, along with fellow Commissioner Debbie Cochran, said Thursday that they are doing all they can on the city’s end to attract the project to Mount Airy.
The two commissioners, along with Martin Collins — community development director for the city — recently spent four hours at Aerial’s Vesta facility, which included a tour.
In conversations with Marcaccio, Cochran said the local delegation sought to stress “how much we would value the expansion in Mount Airy.”
Job creation has been the top priority of Cochran and Brown since they were elected as commissioners in November 2007. Brown also is playing an active role in trying to attract a state prison to Surry County.
Contact Tom Joyce at tjoyce@mtairynews.com or at 719-1924.
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