ersistence often results in a nice payoff. Just ask U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Rockefeller began wooing Hino Motors back in 2001 and stayed in contact through the years with company officials including current Hino Chairman Jagawa Tadaki, asking them to consider locating in West Virginia.
   The Hino–West Virginia linkage culminated on June 25 when the Japanese company announced that it will assemble medium and heavy-duty trucks in Williamstown. Ramping up will be fast, with production due to begin in November.
   The operation will employ 80 and will produce 2,500 trucks annually. Hino is investing US$8.6 million to purchase and equip a 194,000-sq.-ft. (18,000-sq.-m.) facility formerly occupied by Walker Systems, which once employed 300 in the manufacture of wire and cable management and distribution systems.
   Dennis Cuneo, former Toyota executive vice president now serving Toyota subsidiary Hino as a consultant, says several key factors helped build on the foundation laid by Sen. Rockefeller, former Gov. Bob Wise and current Gov. Joe Manchin.
   "There was a readily available building that exactly suited our needs," Cuneo says. "We need a quick start of production and wanted an existing building to get equipment in quickly."
   Logistics was another consideration: The site just off I-77 gives Hino a prime beachhead to increase its penetration into the Northeast. The plant will be West Virginia's first vehicle assembly plant and Hino's first U.S. assembly plant.
   Cuneo says personal involvement by a U.S. senator or governor always makes a difference in industry recruiting. It also can help clear away red tape.
   "There's a fine line between being helpful and too overbearing," Cuneo says, "and they walked that line well."
   Gov. Manchin was able to quickly resolve a potential issue with land adjacent to the building, which Hino wanted to either buy or have rezoned.
   "There was a concern about potential residential encroachment," Cuneo says. "We got on the phone with the governor and he was able to take care of it right then."
   Hino spent eight months selecting its site. The company considered locations in several other states in the Northeast and Midwest. And despite speculation in Arkansas, the project was never a possibility for Marion, home of Hino's new axle plant, Cuneo says.
   Hino's building has room for expansion and Cuneo says a second shift may be added if sales warrant. He says Hino got an "excellent" deal on the building, which had been vacant for two years.
   "It was appraised for $7.5 million, but they got it for substantially lower than that."    Air Liquide, the French multinational industrial and medical gas specialist, needed another core R&D facility to support its rapidly growing global business. A global search ultimately resulted in the company locating in Glasgow, Del., a community just southwest of Wilmington and about 30 miles (48 km.) from Philadelphia. Proximity to major universities tipped the decision in Delaware's favor.
   Air Liquide moved into its 90,000-sq.-ft. (8,360-sq.-m.) facility in January and held official opening ceremonies on June 4 with Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner on hand. The building, now known as the Delaware Research & Technology Center, is a former DuPont facility. Air Liquide's $35-million investment renovated and enlarged it to fit company needs.
   "The bigger question was which country first," explains Shekar Shetty, vice president for R&D in North America for Air Liquide. "Everyone is opening in China or India, but the main reason we chose the U.S. is the quality of universities and schools. We wanted good access to talent."
   Shetty cites the University of Delaware, just 10 miles (16 km.) away, Penn State University, MIT and Harvard, among the schools comprising Air Liquide's potential talent pool, but adds that the company recruits researchers nationally, with hires coming from Northwestern, Georgia Tech and Caltech.
   Air Liquide moved its R&D operations from the Chicago area and consolidated them with a smaller research staff from its Newport, Del., manufacturing facility in the move. That gave the company an initial research staff of about 80, which had grown to 90 by late July. Shetty says the staff will grow to 150 within the next two years. There's plenty of room for growth on the 54-acre (22-hectare) site, which includes a forest reserve.
   "What we do here has implications for our business around the world," Shetty says, observing that Air Liquide's multidisciplinary research is attractive to young PhDs fresh out of school.
   "People use gases for everything," Shetty says. "For a research person with a background in chemistry or microbiology, we offer a variety of problems to work with and it has been very well received. I go to quite a few universities to talk with PhDs and it's a very positive thing."    Bostwick Laboratories, founded just eight years ago, is a rapidly rising star of Richmond's burgeoning life sciences cluster. Dr. David Bostwick, a world-renowned pathologist, founded the urological pathology lab, and the company has grown to be the world's largest lab performing prostate biopsies.
   "Our business is growing very rapidly," says Robert Gold, Bostwick Laboratories director of operations.
   Bostwick is investing $4.6 million to expand in Richmond's Innsbruck Corporate Center, with plans to create 600 jobs over the three years. Gold says the company is already well ahead of that pace. He says the company is broadening from its urological services base to include gastro-intestinal, gynecological and other types of medical tests.
   Gold credits the reputation of Dr. Bostwick and the company's focus on quick turnaround time as reasons for its rapid growth.
   Elkton, a small town in Rockingham County about 15 miles (24 km.) east of Harrisonburg, is home to the sprawling 160-acre (65-hectare) Merck & Co. pharmaceutical manufacturing complex. Two expansions, one announced last December, and the latest, announced in June will create 70 new jobs with a total investment of $250 million.
   Jim Russell, director of support operations for the facility, says the exact size of the expansion has not been determined, but it could involve three new buildings. The new area will help the facility boost capacity of a variety of medicines, including its fast-growing Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine. He says the Elkton facility competed with other Merck manufacturing sites for the expansion.
   "Part of the reason we got it is that we already had a portion of that manufacturing here and we have space available," Russell says. "We have a technical center of excellence here with a technical group that is very knowledgeable in this area. It [Gardasil] is a very important product for us." Russell says hiring will begin later this year and the expansion should be operational by late 2009 or early 2010.    Frederick, Md., is one of the beaming solar energy centers in the U.S. with BP Solar's energy's continually expanding casting, sizing and wafering facility.
   Company officials and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley broke ground on the latest expansion on July 16. That expansion is now pegged as a $97-million investment, up from the $70 million announced last November. The project will double capacity at what is already the largest fully integrated solar plant in North America. Construction is projected for completion by the end of 2009.
   Maryland is also plunging into the ethanol manufacturing movement in a big way this year with several large facilities planned, including a $200-million facility planned by Ecron for Sparrows Point, near Baltimore.