Southern Plants and Facilities
Continued from the Early NE Plants and Facilities Page
Quick access to the dates on this page can be found at: Lynchburg Facilities and Employment Time-Line
Above is the Mountain View Road plant in Lynchburg, VA as built for the GE Rectifier Department. It was completed on Jun 25, 1957 and contained 264,000 square feet of floor space on 122 acres of land. The plant became available for the mobile radio move because the business of the Rectifier Department was on the decline as its Selenium and Copper-Oxide rectifiers were being displaced by solid-state ones. Effective on January 1, 1959 GE's communications businesses moved here from Syracuse, Utica and Clyde NY with operations and people transfered from NY moving in over the next 6 months or so. Operations transferred included mobile radio, power line carrier, microwave and military communications and their supporting functions.
This is the Mt. View Road plant as is appeared in the 1970s. It was called Mt. View Road not because of the small mountains behind it but because of its excellent view of the Blue Ridge Mountains about 25 miles to the west. It is shown here with the two-story office building addition containing 33,000 square feet completed on Jan 18, 1960 and the Mar 15, 1962 major manufacturing and office building expansions that added another 120,000 square feet of floor space for a total of 417,000square feet. The additions have the darker roofs. There were there 3 office additions. The first one at the south end of the building that added the secondary entrance at the corner of the front parking lot, The second one at the north end of the building and the third one at the very south end of the building.
The Carroll Avenue Plant - CAP was about 2.5 miles from the Mt. View Plant. This is a view of the old cotton mill on Carroll Ave. in Lynchburg. Long after the cotton mill had ceased operating GE leased 200,000 square feet in this facility on Aug 14, 1958. Some Selenium rectifier operations, some mobile radio sub-assembly operations, Service Parts and the Advertising and Sales Promotion function were located here. With the addition of the Customer Service Center at Mountain View Road GE was out of this old building by mid-1976.
The Fort Avenue Building (above) was additional office space about 2 miles from the Mt. View Road Plant. Formerly a supermarket it was leased Nov 10, 1969, and later purchased.
On October 16, 1970 the GE News announced
the Florence, SC plant (shown above). Sept. 30, 1971 was the start of construction on this plant, and it was in full
operation in 1973. Initially much of
the metal and plastic fabrication was done there. Later final
assembly
lines for the business and industrial market products
were
added. There was very close integration between the
Florence and
the
Lynchburg plants with each dependent on the other for
materials. Crystals and small material moved south and metal
and
plastic parts flowed north. It's
about 235 miles between the plants, and every night a truck left each
plant headed to the other one. They met in the middle and switched
drivers with the trucks continuing to the other plant and the drivers
returning home.
In the mid 1980s new management de-emphasized in-house
manufacturing and Mobile Radio operations at this plant were being phased out as GE's Medical
Systems business ramped up its operations there. Mobile Radio was out of this buiding by the end of 1989
Above
is the Bradley Park Plant in Lynchburg - about 2 miles from the Mt.
View Road plant. It was initally a leased facility, completed on Apr
22, 1974 and
was
dedicated to the production of thick-film integrated circuits. On June 1, 1977 - the plant was purchased and expansion begun to double its size.
On Nov 21, 1988 GE sold the Bradley Park plant to Lynchburg
Sheltered Industries to house their
Sheltered
Workshop.
On Mar 1, 1975 a new Waterlick Road Plant (not shown)
was
opened in a building that formerly housed a music hall.
It was about 7 miles from the Mt. View Road Plant and was
dedicated to Personal Radio Manufacturing. This
building was
adjacent to the Progress Printing Co. which printed much GE literature.
After GE left this location (When?)
Progress expanded their facility to join the 2 bulldings
together.
This is the Customer Service Center which Mfg. Manager Joe Ponzillo got approved and constructed next to the Mt. View Road plant after the new owner of the leased Carroll Ave. facility tried to drastically raise the rent. It was opened on Jul 1, 1976.
Above
is a 1980 view of the Mt. View Road facility looking Southeast toward
Candler's Mt. after all the building and parking lot additions
had been completed. The tall structure in
the
center is the Power Line Carrier HV test facility opened on April
13, 1973. The building on
the
far left is the Customer Service Center.
The goal of
the 1950s New York management was to to get everything under one roof
at
a new plant. That goal was never met as the rapid expansion of the
mobile-radio business kept continuing pressure on space
resulting in the
need
for multiple expansions at Mt. View Road and the addition of the
several facilities mentioned above. Not until
the mobile-radio business began to decline in the 1980s did the
pressure for more space abate.
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