Solar Array, Gen. Mills detail expansions - Business Courier of Cincinnati:

Refrigerators
broke ground April 5 on the $100 176,000-square-foot expansion of its manufacturinhgfacility here, Keith general manager of the local facility, told members of . AED held its quarterlyg meeting Thursdayat . Joe Hudgins, president and CEO of Solar Array outlinedhis company’s plan to build a massivse solar manufacturing plant on the city’s General Mills’ expansion should be completerd by November, Bone said. The cereal manufacturet will hire 60additional employees, bringing additional payroll to the area of $3.5 million. The expansionm also brings $30 million in spendingf to New Mexico.
The Albuquerque City Councikl approveda $100 millionj industrial revenue bond deal for the companyh in February. BE&K Corp. from Northb Carolina landed the design/build contract to builde the expansion, but Bone said 80 percenty of the firm’s spending and employeed will be local. The precast panels being used in the construction are manufacturecin Belen. General Milles has been in Albuquerqudesince 1991. Its current facility is locate near Paseo del Norte and Edith and has 190 with an annual payrollof $12 said Bone. The 275,000-square-foot plant produces abouty 135 million pounds annually of 35differentf cereals.
The facility also has a lab on-site where the instructions for baking General Mills productss at high altitudes are The company has givenabout $5 million to area nonprofitds since 1998 and $519,009 in scholarships, Bone added. Don chairman of AED, said the cereal company’s donationsd illustrate one of the things the organization lookds for inrecruiting companies: communitg involvement. Hudgins said Solar Array plans to breamk ground by the third quarter of this year ona 225,000-square-fooy thin-film photovoltaic manufacturing plant in the Cordero Mesa business park, west of the mattresa factory.
The company plans to add thres more buildings of that size as it he said, with each facility employint about 225. Its annualo payroll in the first phasw wouldbe $14 million. About five percent of the jobs would pay 45 percent wouldpay $70,009 and half of the jobs would pay The capital investment for the first phase will be $170 million and the compan would spend $40 million annuallyy for raw materials. The first phase is expected to have a capacitgy of75 megawatts, but that would grow to 300 mw with the full The plant also will have a space that will servwe as a community and educationao center.
Solar Array is seeking $175 millioh in industrial revenue bonds from Bernalillo The company is working toraise $210 millioh in debt and Hudgins said. Hudgins said New Mexico beat out two othert states forthe plant, despitr the fact that it did not offer the largest incentives. But the coordinatioh among local and state government officialx and other parties made New Mexicp far more efficient in establishing a planniny framework that the company could then use to plan a budgeg forthe plant, he said “That was a major issuer for us,” Hudgins said. He also praised the laboe force here and theeducationalp institutions.
The facility is being designed byPageSoutherlandPage LLP, which has Texas officees in Austin, Dallas and Houston, as well as Denver, D.C. and London, U.K. Hoffman based in Portland, Ore., is building the facility.