After 45 years of testing rocket motors
– quite audibly to Morgan Hill residents – United Technology
Corp. will close its Coyote Valley facility and move operations to
Florida.
After 45 years of testing rocket motors – quite audibly to Morgan Hill residents – United Technology Corp. will close its Coyote Valley facility and move operations to Florida.
UTC officials announced they would be closing the solid rocket fuel plant on Metcalf Road over the course of the next year. Most of UTC’s 600 employees will be offered jobs in Florida where the UTC plant manufactures liquid rocket fuel, said Julie Anderson, UTC’s manager of communications.
“We are giving all employees the opportunity to transition within the workforce,” Anderson said.
UTC/Pratt Whitney manufactures rocket motors for Department of Defense missiles and for NASA’s space shuttles.
Reasons for closing, she said, were several.
“Two incidents with (fire, explosion, injury and one death) in 2003 triggered a good, hard look at our return on investment,” Anderson said.
The over-capacity of the market, the longterm market forecast and concern about being able to support customers plus having to rebuild the three-story building destroyed last year all added to the need to close, she said.
“This was not a reasonable scenario that Pratt & Whitney or UTC customers could accept,” Anderson said. “It took a long time to come to this decision.”
To help employees find new jobs, if they decide not to make the move to Florida, UTC will bring in an outplacement service to help with resumé writing and interview skills.
“They can choose from 80 different classes,” Anderson said. “We will work with them to get jobs, and we will hold an onsite job fair and post jobs in house.”
UTC will also offer employee assistance programs including counseling to employees and their families.
She said she hadn’t decided herself whether to make the move to Florida.
“I’m a second generation UTC employee,” Anderson said. Her father worked there for more than 35 years but her family is in the area.
“It is very sad for me,” Anderson said.
UTC/Pratt & Whitney is also responsible for introducing perchlorate and other volatile chemicals into parts of the south San Jose aquifer. The company has been pumping and treating the groundwater to reduce the chemicals for about 15 years and, more recently, for perchlorate.
UTC’s perchlorate, as far as anyone knows, is not related to the perchlorate problem in south Morgan Hill and San Martin. That contamination stemmed from an Olin Corp. highway safety flare plant on Tennant Avenue.
“The clean up will go on as planned,” Anderson said. “There are no intentions to stop.
It is too early to know what the company will ultimately decide to do with the land.
“That will be a UTC decision,” Anderson said. “They could sell it or develop it.”
The 5,400-acre site is in the county but could be annexed by the City of San Jose for residential or industrial development or offered to the Open Space Authority.
Carol Holzgrafe covers City Hall for The Times. She can be reached by e-mail at ch********@*************es.com or phoning (408) 779-4106 Ext. 201.
