The Mountaineer

Haywood Vocational Opportunities is expanding and has received help to do so.

With the help of the town of Waynesville, HVO received a grant for $240,000 from the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center. The town made the application on behalf of HVO since the center awards grants only to government entities.

This grant, along with other grants and a loan, will pay for renovations to the former Wellco building in Hazelwood. HVO recently purchased the 117,000-square-foot building and will renovate the building to expand its disposable medical products line. Early estimates of renovation costs are around $3 million, with $590,000 of the cost coming from grants, with the remaining amount from a loan and existing HVO resources.

This project will add 75 jobs over the next two years.

“This will allow us the opportunity to employ more persons in the community and employ more persons with disabilities,” said George Marshall, director of HVO. “We’re very excited and pleased with the support from the town of Waynesville to allow us to be in a position to expand.”

A general contractor has been hired — Clark and Leatherwood — and renovation work will begin soon. Since the building was set up for manufacturing, Marshall said HVO will maintain that layout with offices, manufacturing and warehousing.

“We’ll keep it in harmony with that and upgrade to our needs to produce disposable medical products,” Marshall said.

Marshall said he hopes to have the work completed by March. Since a majority of the work will be done inside, he does not expect the winter weather to cause delays. Once renovations are complete, HVO has 24 months to add the 75 jobs, Marshall said.

In addition to creating more jobs, Marshall said this project will prevent an empty building from remaining empty.

“The outfitting and upgrading is significant because it will continue to be a live building,” Marshall said. “This is something happy, opposed to being a building just sitting there and deteriorating like Dayco. We’re really excited and so is the town of Waynesville.”

The town partnered with HVO about five or six years ago on a waterline project and when the organization came to the town again, it was a good opportunity to help the community.

“With the possibility of 75 new jobs, we were more than happy to make an application to assist HVO to do the renovations,” said Town Manager Lee Galloway. “HVO just continues to grow and it’s a great organization. They’ve been great to the community in terms of providing jobs. In an economy where lots of jobs have been lost, the possibility of adding jobs is wonderful.”

Galloway also applauded the renovation of an empty building.

“We’ve got the opportunity to not have a building sitting there, going derelict like Dayco,” Galloway said. “I’m sure the Hazelwood community and the people on Westwood Circle will be pleased with the appearance. There are so many positives (with the renovations). It’s great.”

HVO currently has 450 employees, with 320 of those full time and 130 in an employee training program.

“We’re excited (about the renovations),” Marshall said. “In addition to that, we’re looking forward to creating another 75 full time employments in the next few years.”