for THE PAPER
EJ Victor, a beloved, family-owned manufacturing company that started in Morganton over three decades ago, is no longer creating the fine furniture that made the company a household name. But its owners hope the pride in manufacturing can live on in the location under a new name.
Owners are selling the 190,000-square-foot building that housed EJ Victor’s operations for 35 years, but not without improving the space for potential buyers. For the next few weeks, a small team will continue to address the damage done by Hurricane Helene, preemptively checking some clean-up off a buyer’s to-do list.
Last year, when Helene left a trail of destruction through Western North Carolina, about 30 inches of floodwater rushed through the EJ Victor building, carrying in debris and dragging almost anything that wasn’t nailed down to one side of the building.
Now, while evidence of the devastating flood remains, the building is not only walkable, but mold and asbestos free, said Broker Robert Dunn and Plant Manager Mark McKinney. Some equipment in the machine room survived the flood. Each machine is marked either “good,” or a variation of “non-repairable.”
Dunn said what the team has done since Helene hit is tremendous. Soaked sheetrock and insulation was removed immediately, McKinney said, preventing mold.
EJ Victor CEO Richard Oliver said his team is cleaning floors and removing all residual silt and dust from the building. Additionally, they are working on minor roof repairs.
The floors that have not been cleaned are stained a reddish brown color from the flood, but clean floors have returned to a natural shade of grey.
FORMER EMPLOYEES
In a previous article in The Paper, Oliver said some employees left early on. The remaining employees received pay until company leadership realized there were issues with the insurance company in November. Oliver said at that point, the company had to let go of 122 employees. Oliver said only five or six employees left in leadership positions are helping close out the company.
Oliver said on Thursday his former employees generally fall into three groups. Some have already found work elsewhere. Others chose to wait and see if EJ Victor would reopen and remain interested in returning. The final group includes older employees who may simply opt to retire.
Dunn said some previous employees “expressed keen interest in coming back, but that will be between the new owners and the employee.”
Oliver said the whole situation is tragic, but couldn’t have been helped. He said some employees, such as McKinney, had been there for more than 30 years.
“It’s sad to see a lot of folks, what they put so much into, not going forward,” Oliver said.
NO BUYER YET
Dunn said Wednesday that, while there is not yet a buyer, he had shown the building “twice to folks in furniture manufacturing.”
Oliver said two appraisals of the building at 110 Wamsutta Mill Road yielded drastically different numbers. He declined to share the range of the appraisals.
Mica Banks is the County Government reporter for The Paper. She can be reached at 828-445-8595 or mica@thepaper.media.