Solar Array, Gen. Mills detail expansions - Phoenix Business Journal:

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broke ground April 5 on the $100 176,000-square-foot expansion of its manufacturingfacility here, Keith Bone, general managee of the local told members of . AED held its quarterly meeting Thursdayat . Joe Hudgins, presidenty and CEO of Solar Array Ventures, outlinedr his company’s plan to build a massive solafr manufacturing plant onthe city’ds Westside. General Mills’ expansion should be completedby November, Bone The cereal manufacturer will hire 60 additionap employees, bringing additional payrolpl to the area of $3.
5 The expansion also brings $30 million in spending to New The Albuquerque City Council approvesd a $100 million industrial revenue bond deal for the compan in February. BE&K Corp. from Norty Carolina landed the design/build contract to build the but Bone said 80 percent ofthe firm’s spendingv and employees will be local. The precast panels being used in the constructiob are manufactured in General Mills has been in Albuquerquesince 1991. Its currenf facility is located near Paseo del Norte and Editnh and has190 employees, with an annual payrollo of $12 million, said Bone. The 275,000-square-foot plant producees about 135 million pounds annually of 35differenr cereals.
The facility also has a lab on-sitwe where the instructions for baking Generaol Mills products at high altitudesare created. The company has given about $5 million to area nonprofite since 1998and $519,000 in scholarships, Bone Don Power, chairman of AED, said the cerea l company’s donations illustrate one of the things the organizatiob looks for in recruiting community involvement. Hudgins said Solar Array pland to break ground by the third quarter of this year ona 225,000-square-foogt thin-film photovoltaic manufacturing plant in the Cordero Mesa business west of the mattress factory.
The companyu plans to add three more buildings of that size as it he said, with each facility employiny about 225. Its annualk payroll in the first phase wouldbe $14 About five percent of the jobs woulde pay $100,000, 45 percent would pay $70,000 and half of the jobs would pay The capital investment for the firs t phase will be $170 milliojn and the company would spend $40 million annually for raw The first phase is expected to have a capacityt of 75 megawatts, but that would grow to 300 mw with the full The plant also will have a space that will serves as a community and educational center. Solar Array is seekinbg $175 million in industrial revenu bonds fromBernalillo County.
The companyg is working to raise $210 million in debt and Hudgins said. Hudgins said New Mexico beat out two othedr states forthe plant, despite the fact that it did not offet the largest incentives. But the coordinatio n among local and state government officials and otherd parties made New Mexicop far more efficient in establishing a planning frameworki that the company could then use to plan a budge t forthe plant, he said “That was a majotr issue for us,” Hudgins said. He also praiser the labor force here and theeducational institutions. The facility is beingf designed byPageSoutherlandPage LLP, which has Texas offices in Dallas and Houston, as well as Washington, D.C.
and London, U.K. Hoffman Construction, baseed in Portland, Ore., is building the