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Advanced Vehicle Research Center breaks ground
By RUSSELL CARTER/Star-Tribune Staff Writer
Monday, November 24, 2008 12:33 PM EST
DANVILLE - Danville and Pittsylvania County officials broke ground Monday for an Advanced Vehicle Research Center at the Cyberpark.
The Advanced Vehicle Research Center will begin construction on a 20,000- square-foot research and design on 13.8 on Stinson Drive in the city.
In addition, the company plans to build a closed-loop natural terrain track on a 63-acre site near Danville Regional Airport.
The track will be used to test manned and unmanned military vehicles and off-road vehicles.
Blairs Construction Inc. in Gretna is building the new facility.
Construction is scheduled to be completed in the spring.
The center has a commercial initiative to convert hybrid Toyota Priuses to Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles.
Other initiatives include natural gas conversion and hydrogen mobile generation.
The facility will create at least 30 jobs with an average salary of $50,000.
"We see the Danville area as the perfect place for our expansion, and we're very enthusiastic about beginning construction," said Dick Dell, executive director of the Advanced Vehicle Research Center.
Dell said the region already has significant assets that support the automotive industry such as Virginia International Raceway and Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.
County and city officials welcomed the new research center.
"This is phenomenal for this time of year," said Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors Chairman Coy Harville. "This is a real Thanksgiving present to the economy of the area."
Danville Mayor Sherman Saunders believes the research center will expans and bring even more jobs to the region.
"We are very pleased to see more progress in our region," Saunders said.
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