This broadcast of CoastLine originally aired on January 21, 2015.
By this spring, Vertex Rail will begin manufacturing railroad tank cars.
Company officials will spend the next several months up-fitting the Wilmington plant, which was once an old crane production facility, for its highly-specialized operations.
Vertex is widely expected to invest about $60 million in the community and hire about 1,300 people. According to Senior Economist Woody Hall from UNCW’s Cameron School of Business, Vertex will likely have more than a billion-dollar impact on the economy.
Notably, the biggest economic boon for the area in recent history arrived without the help of cash incentives.
In-studio guests:
Donald Croteau is the CEO of Vertex Rail. He joined us to talk about why he chose Wilmington for his plant, how he went from being a kid growing up in the projects to the head of a high-tech rail car company, and why he’s signed on to a relatively new local program called Hometown Hires.
Ben David, District Attorney of New Hanover and Pender Counties, is one of the creators of the Hometown Hires program.
For more information on Hometown Hires, follow this link: http://hometownhires.com/
