November 31, 2005

Weather
High 57, Low 32
Details/Page C8
Burlington, North Carolina
www.thetimesnews.com
118th year, No. 240
SATURDAY, December 31, 2005
50 cents
Fabric
A new look for downtown maker
LabCorp announces plans for
cuts
$12.5 million facility in Burlington
jobs
By Brandee Hayhurst
Times-News
Sumitted artist rendering of building plans
By James Moffat
Times-News
The county’s largest employer is
ready to make a multi-million-dollar
investment in downtown Burlington.
LabCorp, the second-largest clinical laboratory company in North
America, has plans to build a new
115,000-square-foot office complex
on the site of the former Kayser-Roth
Building at the southwest corner of
South Main and Morehead streets.
Bradford Smith, the company’s
executive vice president of corporate affairs, said the existing building would be torn down and
replaced with a new state-of-the-art
“class A” office building that would
“form the anchor of other things we
may do to improve our other buildings to tie them together.”
“It’s a significant, tangible commitment to downtown as our headquarters,” Smith said. “It will be the
anchor for achieving the vision of a is in its “initial stages,” the new
more campus-like look.”
complex could cost between $10 milSmith said that LabCorp, which lion and $12 million.
has owned the building for about 12
Artist renderings of the building
years, would bring between 300 and show a glass-enclosed entry beyond
400 employees from the company’s a courtyard, complete with a founsales and marketing divisions into tain. Smith said that building,
the new complex.
beyond housing existing employees,
Those employees are now scat- would serve as a training center for
tered across the state, including in the company’s 700 to 800 sales assosome buildings the company now ciates across the country.
leases within the county.
See LOOK/Page A2
Smith said that while the project
After building eight straight waterfront homes following the initial
1997 Dream Home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., HGTV has constructed
a 5,700-square-foot mountain retreat atop a ridge in North Carolina.
A decade of dream homes
2001
Dramatic locations become a reality
Dramatic locations b
12-year-old boy shoots deer hunter
1997 Jackson Hole, Wyo.
The Associated Press
LEXINGTON — A 12-year-old boy
with a rifle, encouraged by his grandfather, shot and killed a hunter whom
they thought was a deer, officials said.
Prosecutors must decide whether to
press charges in the death of Douglas
Wayne Murdock, 28, of Thomasville,
who was pronounced dead at the scene
Wednesday.
Murdock was hunting just before 10
a.m. in a shooting lane in Randolph
County when he was shot, said Capt.
Chris Huebner, the hunting and boating safety coordinator with the N.C.
Wildlife Commission.
The boy and his grandfather, who
also were hunting, were riding a fourwheeler through the area when the
grandfather thought he saw a deer and
told his grandson to shoot.
Murdock, who was wearing a blazeorange vest and abiding by all hunting
regulations, was shot once in the upper
chest with a scope rifle, Huebner said.
Camden, Maine
2006 Grey
Rock, N.C.
“He basically was just sitting there wildlife enforcement officer investiin a shooting lane, minding his own gating the shooting. State law allows
business when he got shot,” Huebner children under 16 who have taken
the
2002
Shersaid. “The worst part is that with a course to hunt under the supervision
wood,
scope rifle (the boy) should have been of a properly licensed adult.
Md.
able to tell that it’s not an animal.
Wilson added that the boy, his grandDefinitely, with a blaze-orange vest, he
1998
father and Murdock were members
Beaufort,of
should have been able2000
to tell.”
S.C.
the
same
hunting
club.
Nehalem,
Murdock had attended
a Ore.
huntingThe
Randolph
County
Sheriff
’sSt.Of2004
safety course, Huebner said.
Marys,
fice
is
also
participating
in
the
investiThe boy had also taken a hunting1999
2003
2005
Ga.
gation, which
WilsonMexico
said he expects to
Lake Tyler,
Rosemary
safety course and his grandfather had
Texas
Beach,
Fla.
Beach,
Fla.
a hunting license, said Gale Wilson, a be completed by the end of next week.
TV channel will
give away
Lake Lure spot
By Tim Whitmire
The Associated Press
LAKE LURE — Go ahead
and dream. That’s what Home
and
Garden
Television’s
(HGTV) annual Dream Home
contest is all about.
Just don’t get too attached to
the idea that you’ll actually
live in the 2006 grand prize, a
5,700-square-foot traditionalstyle mountain home perched
atop a ridge in the Blue Ridge
foothills near Lake Lure. Even
if you’re lucky enough to have
the winning entry out of the
more than 40 million expected
to pour in between Sunday’s
start of the contest and the
Feb. 17 deadline, you might
find that taking up residence
is prohibitively expensive.
The contest’s 2005 winner,
Don Cruz, moved from suburban Chicago to Tyler, Texas, to
take possession of his dream
home, a lakefront property
valued at $1.5 million, plus
furnishings. But taxes on his
winnings are expected to total
more than $650,000, and local
officials slammed the door on
Cruz’s plan to pay his bills by
renting the boathouse and a
master bedroom.
In a recent interview, Cruz
said he’s still living in the
house in Tyler and has no
plans to leave, even as April
15 looms.
“We plan to stay,” he said.
“God will provide. We’ll say a
prayer, turn it over to him and
he provides. It’ll all work out.”
The daunting fiscal math of
the Dream Home — even if
you survive the initial tax
crunch, there’s the annual
expense of local property
taxes, plus maintenance and
See HOME/Page A2
2000
Nehalem, Ore.
Lake Tyler,
Inside today
Texas
19
Ro
Be
Dramatic locations become a reality
Classifieds......................D1
Comics ...........................C4
Dramatic
locations
Crossword.......................C5
b
After building eight straight waterfront homes following the initial
1997 Dream Home in Jackson Hole, Wyo., HGTV has constructed
a 5,700-square-foot mountain retreat atop a ridge in North Carolina.
A decade of dream homes
2001
After building eight straight waterfro
1997
Dream Home in Jackson Hole,
Editorial...........................A4
a 5,700-square-foot mountain retreat
Homes ............................E1
A decade of dream homes
SOURCE: HGTV
The dream home nightmare
How much the company will
shrink is unclear, but Alexander Fabrics has confirmed
recent cuts in its workforce.
The Burlington textile-apparel company had about 125 employees when it announced
layoffs of 19 employees in
March. But in the summer and
fall, the company began hiring
again “in anticipation of an increased volume of business.”
According to a statement
from Cherry Howe, the human
resources director, the company was not able to keep those
jobs.
“After an initial surge of
business during August and
September, the increase in volume did not continue and our
volume levels dropped back to
previous amounts,” her statement reads. “In light of this, we
were forced to reduce employment levels at this time to
match our current volume.”
Howe added that the company is “doing everything possible to maintain the remaining jobs here in Alamance
County.”
“We especially regret that
these layoffs had to occur during the holiday season,” her
statement reads.
Howe did not return phone
calls seeking further details.
Officials monitoring unemployment also have not heard
from Alexander Fabrics on
Aftermany
building
eight
straight
how
will
lose
their waterfro
jobs.
1997
Dream
Home inmanager
Jackson Hole,
Jerome
Cheek,
of
a 5,700-square-foot
mountain retreat
the
local N.C. Employment
SeA decade
of dream office,
homessaid
curity
Commission
that workers1997
started
appearJackson
Hole, Wyo
ing at their doorstep this week.
“We are hearing rumors,
and some of the people are
coming in,” he said. “But we
don’t know how many.”
AP
1997 Jackson Hole, Wyo.
Markets........................C6,7
Movies............................C5
Obituaries.......................C2
2002
Sherwood,
Md.
1998
Beaufort,
S.C.
2005
Lake Tyler,
Texas
1999
Rosemary
Beach, Fla.
2003
Mexico
Beach, Fla.
SOURCE: HGTV
Horoscope ......................C5
1997 Jackson Hole, Wyo
Camden, Maine
2006 Grey
Rock, N.C.
2000
Nehalem, Ore.
2005
Religion........................A6,7
Region.............................C1
Sports..............................B1
2000
Nehalem, Ore.
2004 St.
Marys,
Ga.
SOURCE: HGTV
AP
2005
Lake Tyler,
Texas
19
Ro
Be
SOURCE: HGTV
<AP> DREAM HOMES 123005: Graphic shows locations of HGTV dream
Dream Home; 2c x 4 inches; 96 mm x 102 mm; MS; ETA 3 p.m. </AP>
Governors try to track down missing sex offenders
Editors note: It is mandatory to include all sources that accompany this graphic when repurpos
More than 2,000 fail to re-register following Hurricane Katrina
By Kevin Freking
The Associated Press
COMING SUNDAY
in the Times-News
Get a sneak peak at the
coolest innovations of 2006.
WASHINGTON — Governors in
states that accepted Katrina evacuees are being urged to locate about
2,000 registered sex offenders who
fled the Gulf region during the hurricane’s mayhem and may have vanished from legally required tracking.
“When sex offenders know they’re
being watched, when they know
they’re being monitored, they are
less likely to offend again,” said
Wade Horn, assistant secretary for
children and families at the Health
and Human Services Department.
“When they no longer believe they
are being monitored or watched,
they can be tempted to offend again.”
The Administration for Children
and Families estimated that about 30
states are affected. In November,
agency officials matched the names
on sex offender registries in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with
the names of evacuees who applied
for disaster assistance.
The agency came up with more
than 2,000 matches. The find led
Horn to work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
on a system that would allow state
law enforcement agencies to find
registered sex offenders who are
receiving disaster assistance.
All states are required to have sex
offender registries, and people convicted of sexually violent offenses
are required to register their current
addresses.
Horn wrote to the nation’s 50 governors in late November to alert
them to the new search they could
undertake with FEMA, and the
process they were to use.
“I am greatly concerned that known
sex offenders who may have relocat-
ed to your State may take advantage
of their anonymity and harm children
once again,” Horn wrote in a letter to
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.
The letter indicated that Texas law
enforcement officials had already
done a cross-check, but that it was
the only state that had at that point.
Federal authorities told Texas of
304 known sex offenders who had
relocated to the state. Only 14 are
known to have registered and provided their contact information to law
enforcement, said Jerry Strickland,
spokesman for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.