FedEx Delays Opening of Greensboro Hub Last Edited: Friday, 26 Dec 2008, 6:23 PM EST Created: Friday, 26 Dec 2008, 4:02 PM EST Construction of FedEx's cargo-sorting hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport is underway.
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The FedEx sorting hub at Piedmont Triad International Airport will not open as scheduled in June 2009 and, when it does open, will have at least 50 percent fewer employees than the company pledged to employ.
FedEx said it could be fall 2009 or later before the cargo-sorting hub opens because of lower demand for shipping services and a cost-cutting effort by the company.
FedEx spokesman Jim McCluskey said the company's current airport operations, which employs 160 full- and part-time workers, will move into the newly built hub in June. FedEx then plans to hire up to 200 additional employees for the first phase of the hub, for a total workforce of about 360.
That figure is well short of the 700 to 800 employees FedEx has been saying for years it would employ when the hub opened.
FedEx is eligible for $115 million in incentives based on the number of employees at the hub and other factors. FedEx and the state agreed to those incentives in 1998, but McCluskey said a lot has changed in the last decade.
"I think you need to look at the economy more than 10 years ago and the projections based on that snapshot in time," he said.
FedEx said the delay of the airport sorting facility has not affected its ground distribution hub being built in nearby Kernersville. The company broke ground on that facility last month, and it remains on schedule to open in 2011 with at least 700 people working there at the outset.
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