Community Spreads Out Welcome Mat for Coors

Alma Sipe can look out through the front window of her grocery and imagine workmen laying down sewer pipes.

She thanks the Adolph Coors Co. of Golden, Colo., for that imagery.

The Colorado brewery is going to build a big plant down the road, just a hollering distance from Alma and her husband Robert’s corner store. Industrialization of this microdot on the Virgina map means a bit of modernization.

May Get ‘Sewer System’

“I don’t know that it (McGaheysville) will change a whole lot,” said Sipe, standing behind her counter and keeping one eye on the soap operas. “But it should provide a lot better jobs and a sewer system. Everyone right now has septic tanks.”

After years of negotiations and planning, Coors, which has been known for its Rocky Mountain location and spring water, announced last month that it will build a packaging plant and probably a brewery smack in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley.

The site for the new Coors facility is about 15 miles east of Harrisonburg, in the heart of poultry and dairy country, where barns and chicken huts dot acre after acre of gently rolling hills.

Many folks still make a living off the land, but signs are everywhere that the valley is quickly changing.

Coors will join a growing constellation of companies and businesses and manufacturers that have found Virgina, which is a right-to-work and low-tax state, an ideal spot to locate.

The economic evolution is due in part to an aggressive marketing job by the state government. With a 75-person staff and a $6-million budget, Virginia’s Office of Economic Development has been aggressively seeking new businesses.

Although the state makes no special tax deals for companies, it does offer them a chance to make use of the state’s industrial training program, which will train workers generally at no cost to employers, according to Mark Kilduff of the economic development office.

Significant Capital Investment

Coors’ decision, Kilduff said, means “a very significant capital investment, with a possibility for very significant employment.”

Coors has purchased a little more than 2,000 acres of prime farm land in Rockingham County, where it will start construction of the $70-million packaging plant next spring. When finished, the plant is expected to employ about 230 workers.