Who’s #1? – Biggest Job Announcement Busts – Part #1

SouthsideCentral has been working on a countdown of the biggest job busts that have been announced in the Southside Region in the last few years. I know I’ve missed a lot of them, but I’ve got eight of them all snarked up ready to go. Let’s get it started with #8, #7 and #6…

#8: Horse Park of the South – On paper, this looked like a great idea for Rockingham County. Apparently, there isn’t an abundance of horse parks in the region. All the county had to do was build this horse park by spending a few million dollars and watch the horses fly in (figuratively speaking, of course). The intelligent people who live in Rockingham county quickly smelled horsecrap instead of a horse park, voted every county commissioner out of office who supported the idea and the land area off of Highway 29 is still a land area off of Highway 29. The Horse Park of the South isn’t really a big Job Bust, but SouthsideCentral just loves to use the word “horsecrap” whenever we can.

#7: Ecomnets – In September 2010, there was a big celebration at the Airside Industrial Park as Governor Bob McDonnell came in to preside over the official ribbon cutting of Ecomnets. The company had just closed on the former EDS building and was ready to start retrofitting the building for the production of their “green-friendly” Verdio computers. The company announced they would be hiring over 160 employees at an average salary of $50,000 over the next three years. They got $500,000 from the Tobacco Commission and $90,000 from the Danville Regional Foundation to “help” out. How’d that business plan work out?

Not too good. Ecomnets realized that people weren’t going to buy “green-friendly” computers made in Danville, so those 160 announced quietly went away. And by quietly, I’m meaning with none of the hoopla when the company’s plans were announced. Ecomnets quickly changed their strategy into a data center that has about 15 employees and you haven’t heard much out of them since. The CEO of the company said that “performance agreements would be amended”, which means they’d have to give the bonus money back. Oh yeah, Ecomnets held a “Green Computing Symposium” (or something like that) during their first year in Danville. It was all done up fancy at the Institute and had all the high-level big names of the industry make presentations on the future. We should have known that Ecomnets was going to be a Job Bust when the 2nd annual “Green Computing Symposium” was held in Northern Virginia instead of Danville.

#6: Lifebatt – Lifebatt came to Danville from Las Vegas (you can insert your own gambling joke here). They make or import or do something with fancy batteries. Every so often they show off a fancy bicycle that’s powered by their batteries. They have gotten some economic development money to make Danville their World Headquarters but I haven’t seen or heard of any jobs being created there. They’ve been around since 2010 and so far, it’s a Job Bust. (Sidenote: Then-Senator Jim Webb attended the Lifebatt ribbon-cutting in one of his few visits to Danville. During his small speech, he looked uncomfortable, constipated and took off out of Danville as fast as he could.)

That’s three down, and I’ve got 5 more to go. Part #2 comes later this weekend.