Gene Bailey (left), of the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance, talks with Shawn Newgrad (center) and David Stone (right) of Mid-Atlantic Precast. View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

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New King George plant outlines plans at opening

Precast concrete manufacturing plant celebrates grand opening in King George industrial park

Date published: 10/31/2009

By CATHY DYSON

Only one company that manufactures precast concrete walls opened on the East Coast this year--and that was in King George County's industrial park.

Yesterday, residents, county officials and contractors from across the state and region gathered to celebrate the grand opening of Mid-Atlantic Precast.

The new business, the only one of its kind in Virginia, opened this spring and is on track to produce 700,000 square feet of hollow-core wall panels this year, said President David Stone.

"We're ecstatic," he said yesterday before welcoming 100 guests who gathered in the facility, many wearing blue or white hard hats. "King George is the perfect location for our plant."

The concrete panels that Mid-Atlantic produces are used in hotels, dormitories and apartment buildings.

"If you've ever stayed in a hotel and looked up at the ceiling and said, 'I wonder what those joists are up there,' well, they're hollow-core slabs," said salesman Allan Paczewski.

Mid-Atlantic panels already have been used used to build a Hilton Garden Inn in Waldorf, Paczewski said. Slabs produced yesterday, as visitors watched the process, are destined for a new dormitory at the University of Virginia.

"It's nice to go to an open house, to see a business doing something," said Hunter Greenlaw, a local contractor who hoped to use the concrete panels in his projects. "And this is an impressive facility."

Others, from as far away as Bethlehem, Pa., had the same reaction to the state-of-the-art equipment which puts down beds of concrete that are 750 feet long. Saw blades made from low-grade diamonds slice the slabs into pieces.

"It looks great, and it's really great for the area," said King George resident Roy Wells. "When they were building it, the recession hit, and we were wondering if they were going to open the doors."

Wells is a rebar fabricator at Gerdau Ameristeel, Mid-Atlantic's neighbor in the 145-acre industrial park. Gerdau will provide some of the steel used in the concrete slabs, and nearby gravel operations along the Rappahannock River will supply sand and stone.

Having suppliers close by will cut down on manufacturing costs, and the park's proximity to major interstates will make it easy for the company to truck its panels across the state, said John Murrell, an Ashland contractor who has already used Mid-Atlantic products.

King George County purchased 145 acres for its industrial park in 2006 and extended sewer and water to the site, said Nicole Thompson, economic development director. The park is off State Route 3, across from the Birchwood power plant and King George landfill. Mid-Atlantic Precast is the park's second large manufacturer. The other is Gerdau Ameristeel, which provides fabricated concrete reinforcing steel to customers across the United States. Superior Paving Corp., Weld Tech Inc. and Total Power Sweeping Services Inc. are also in the park. Another talked-about tenant is Harris Teeter, which announced in January it would buy 100 acres adjoining the industrial park. The grocer planned to build a $101 million, 500,000-square-foot distribution center at the site. As the economy slowed, so has Harris Teeter's timeline to build. The grocer has gotten five extensions from the county as it continues its "due diligence" studies, but King George officials are still confident the warehouse will come to the county.

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Date published: 10/31/2009