A Lynchburg steel company has scored a contract for an NBA arena that will bring 50 new jobs to Lynchburg, company officials announced Friday.
Banker Steel officials said Friday that the company was awarded a $50 million contract to provide the structural steel for the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The center, a sports and entertainment complex, will serve as the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, once their move from New Jersey is complete.
Banker Steel Human Relations Director Sherry Hilder said the contract is a substantial one for the company, which was founded in 1997 from the defunct Montague-Betts steel plant.
“To increase our work force by 50 folks now is a big deal,” Hilder said, noting the company currently employs close to 200.
Most of the positions hired, she said, will be shop positions, though some will be administrative.
Hilder said the company will hold a job fair from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Feb. 2 at the Kirkley Hotel.
Anyone with steel fabrication experience, she said, is encouraged to apply.
“We will be doing interviews on the spot,” Hilder said, adding “We are still kind of fine-tuning the positions that we are actually going to be hiring at that time.”
This project is not the first New York venture for the company.
In 2006, Banker Steel produced support columns for the 1 World Trade Center monument to the World Trade Center buildings that collapsed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
One of the columns was shipped to Ground Zero, decorated with messages and signatures from Central Virginians, who took a December day at Lynchburg’s City Stadium to show their support for the project.
Hilder said since that year, the company has taken some hits and suffered from worker turnover due to the recession, but has come through the storm a good deal stronger.
“We’ve kind of weathered that whole economic downturn, I think, in a phenomenal manner,” she said.
“It’s a banner year, I think, for Banker Steel.”
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