For a county facing an unemployment rate of 12.2 percent, looming government layoffs and delays of a pair of previously announced high-profile business relocations, a local company's $200 million trade agreement with China is welcome news and signals a significant step away from Pasco's reliance on home construction and service industry jobs as its economic base.
Dais Analytic Corp.'s nanotechnology-based heating, cooling, ventilation and water filtration products are the cornerstone of a five-year agreement with a Chinese government purchasing service acquiring new systems to help reduce energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in China.
The deal is projected to create as many as 1,000 new jobs for the 18-employee company in Odessa. Unlike Sysco Corp. and T. Rowe Price, which have delayed their planned moves to Pasco County, Dais Analytic is already here and its growth is not contingent on a national economic turnaround.
The expansion of a local industry is laudable and comes without a call (so far) for government incentives, but the company's current 10,000 square feet of space are expected to suffice only for the next 12 months. It owns other lots in the West Pasco Industrial Park on the north side of State Road 54, so initial growth in that location is expected. However, Tim Tangredi, president and CEO of Dais Analytic, said eventually the company will seek a 200,000-square-foot campus for its growing workforce.
Tangredi acknowledged that questions have been raised about whether the company would stay in Pasco for the long haul, but he complimented county and Economic Development Council officials and said "you're good to those people who've been good to you.''
Dais Analytic, then a 5-year-old company with eight employees, moved to Pasco a decade ago from the Albany, N.Y., area after New York state authorities said it was too small to qualify for economic incentives. The EDC, Pasco County and the state of Florida lured it to Odessa. An arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce assisted in the contract with Genertec-America, an overseas subsidiary of China General Technology, described by its chief strategic officer as a purchasing agent for the Chinese government.
Hiring in Odessa could begin in November or December and the eventual workforce should be about 60 percent assembly work and 40 percent engineering, research and development, and other white-collar jobs.
If the company projections hold true, it is a true success for the effort to lure high-value jobs to Pasco and to help curb the live-here, work-there job force in which 80,000 workers leave the county each day for employment elsewhere.
News
