Virginia Uses Tax Breaks, Other Incentives to Lure High-Tech Factories : Jobs: First it was Motorola. Now IBM, Toshiba announce joint venture in state.

A hefty package of tax and other incentives helped lure the second high-technology factory in four months to Virginia, far from the more familiar surroundings of the Silicon Valley or Boston.

Virginia Gov. George F. Allen worked out a $48.2-million package for the joint IBM-Toshiba venture. In April, Allen proposed $85.6 million in incentives to get Motorola Corp. to choose Virginia. Both deals must be approved by state lawmakers.

The state offers low union representation and a well-trained work force, analysts said, but the tax packages were probably the deciding factor.

“I don’t know that it happened here, but the tax breaks, frankly, are a lot of times what does it,” said Neeraj Vohra, research analyst at Wheat, First Securities in Richmond. “States and cities fall over themselves these days trying to follow that type of development.”

The $1.2-billion IBM-Toshiba plant would produce the next generation of semiconductors. Motorola’s semiconductor plant west of Richmond would cost the company $3 billion.

The IBM-Toshiba plant in Manassas, a 50-50 venture of the computer companies, would help meet the fast-growing worldwide demand for memory chips, the brains behind equipment such as computers and cellular phones.

IBM and Toshiba began talking about the venture on the East Coast about six months ago, said Jim Smith, a spokesman for IBM’s microelectronics division.

“There are other sites that could have been considered,” Smith said, but he added that he does not know where the companies scouted.

The project, to be built on land IBM already owns, would make chips to be sold in North America. The project would mean 1,200 new jobs at first, plus 2,400 others in industries associated with the new project, Allen said.

The Manassas plant could eventually mean a $4-billion investment and 4,000 new jobs, the companies said at a news conference.

The Motorola plant, to be built on 230 acres in Goochland County, is expected to eventually employ as many as 5,000. State officials said the project should pay for itself in about three years.

Worldwide chip sales are expected to cross the $100-billion mark this year, from just over $90 billion in 1994.