'Unexpected' demand for incandescent bulbs cited; 57-acre property on market
By James Heffernan - jheffernan@nvdaily.com
WINCHESTER -- General Electric's Winchester lamp plant, originally slated to close in July, will remain open until late September, a corporate spokeswoman said Tuesday.
"We've had some unexpected increases in demand for certain types of incandescent bulbs, so the decision was made to keep that plant open until Sept. 24," said Janice Fraser, with GE's Lighting division in Cleveland.
The 455,000-square-foot facility at 125 Apple Valley Road is the company's lone remaining U.S. plant for assembling tungsten-filament light bulbs. It opened in 1975 and currently employs about 200 people.
In announcing its decision last summer to close the location, GE cited new lighting efficiency standards that will render the plant's products obsolete over the next decade. In recent years, consumers have started buying electricity-sipping compact fluorescent bulbs, which produce far less heat and last up to 10 times longer than traditional bulbs.
The majority of CFLs are manufactured in China and other Asian countries.
GE considered retrofitting the Winchester lamp plant to produce more energy-efficient bulbs, but the move would not have been cost-efficient, plant manager Joseph Cenin said last year. Employees were given an opportunity to offer cost-saving alternatives to closing the facility under a process GE calls "idea generation."
"We had held out some remote hope that it would take an alternative path, but that doesn't appear to be the case," said Patrick Barker, executive director of the Winchester-Frederick County Economic Development Commission.
Meanwhile, the property, which sits on a little over 57 acres inside a technology zone, is on the market, with an asking price of $13 million.
Locally, Richard Bell, principal broker with Adams Nelson & Associates in Winchester, has the listing on the property. Bell could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Because the site is still operational, Barker said the EDC is marketing it as not being available for occupancy until early 2011.
"We'll hold off on being proactive with it until later in the year," he said.
But the listing has garnered quite a bit of interest in its first month, Barker said. "It's a fairly large building on a big lot, with a lot of infrastructure that others simply can't duplicate."
According to the listing, the site features two primary production areas, an automated warehouse, employee locker rooms, a cafeteria, rail access, a dual power grid, city water and sewer lines, and an on-site storm water management pond.
"A lot of clients are looking for an existing building because they need to be up and running fairly quickly," Barker said. "So it definitely holds some positives for us."
