Dell's friends start to move in

Looks like Dell will have some familiar faces living in the neighborhood when it opens its 700,000 square-foot facility in North Carolina on October 5.

The Greensboro News Record reported over the weekend that World Wide Technology, a St. Louis-based company is delivering boxes to its new digs in north High Point, a community near Interstate 40 next week.

World Wide helps Dell coordinate its 50 suppliers that assist the computer maker with storage, packaging, and building the computers. The two have teemed together previously at Dell's plants in Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas.

Two of those suppliers are also moving close by, according to the News Record. Austin Foam Plastics is leasing a 55,190-square-foot facility and APL Logistics out of California is leasing a 315,000-square-foot facility. Both warehouses are located in Winston-Salem.

When completed this summer, the plant in Alliance Science and Technology Park will provide nearly 2,000 jobs in the next five years and be Dell's third and largest plant in the United States.

The new Dell plant has been a bit overshadowed by a controversy over cash and incentives that Dell received just to move into North Carolina.

The state put up nearly $245 million in cash and tax breaks. Local governments pitched in another $30 million. Governor Mike Easley supports the idea of handing Dell incentives to come to North Carolina.

Lawyers for the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law (NCICL) cried foul and now have a 69-page complaint pending in the courts to try and amend the terms of Dell's moving in party.