The N.C. Department of Commerce said yesterday that Dell Inc. has repaid the $1.5 million it received from the state's Job Development Investment Grant.
The repayment surfaced as a concern on Oct. 7, when Dell announced that it is closing its desktop-computer assembly plant in southeastern Forsyth County by mid-January and eliminating 905 jobs.
Kathy Neal, a spokeswoman for the department, said that its general counsel confirmed that Dell paid back the $567,000 disbursement from 2006 and $945,000 disbursement from 2007.
The company also qualified for a payment in 2008 but will not receive that money, Neal said.
The state has paid out a total of $8.5 million in grants and tax incentives to Dell. It's not clear whether the state will recoup money for its other tax credits and incentives, and Neal said that there was no update.
The state's incentive package, valued at as much as $267 million over Dell's stay in North Carolina, was offered based in part on projections of 1,700 jobs at the plant and from 4,500 to 6,500 indirect jobs being created related to the plant.
The package was also tied to the number of computers the plant churned out.
As it turned out, the peak of employment in Dell's plant was 1,400, including 1,150 Dell personnel and 250 contract employees. No more than 500 indirect jobs were believed to have been created as a result of the plant.
Dell has said -- including in an Oct. 20 letter to Allen Joines, the mayor of Winston-Salem -- that it will pay back $26.5 million in local incentives by mid-February.
The company agreed that the incentive repayments are $15.6 million to the city, $7.9 million to the county, nearly $2.8 million to the Millennium Fund and $308,622 to the Forsyth County Development Corp.
Each group will have to submit a formal repayment request to Dell after the plant is closed, at which time Dell will have up to 30 days to make the payment.
Joines said that city officials are discussing what to do with the money that's left over once the city pays off about $6 million in loans related to Dell.
Dave Plyler, the chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, said that the commissioners are likely to consider lowering taxes first. Other suggestions were repaying debt on school bonds, reserving it as revenue for the 2010-11 budget or making it a contribution to the county's rainy-day fund.
rcraver@wsjournal.com
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