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153 to lose jobs as bedmaker closes
By SCOTT BARANCIK
Published February 2, 2005
A Tampa bed manufacturer is being laid to rest by a competitor that acquired it little more than a year ago.
Leggett & Platt Inc., a publicly traded company in Carthage, Mo., said it will close the Orthomatic adjustable bed factory at 500 South Falkenburg Road on April 1. All 153 workers will be laid off.
Leggett bought the factory from founder Santoni Antinori in November 2003. Senior employee relations representative Mike Altman said Leggett intended to keep the facility running but decided recently to move the Orthomatic's production to plants in Kentucky and California, where it has excess capacity.
"It's really just a consolidation," he said.
Orthomatic's is a proud but sometimes tragic story. In 1982, a fire that began in the bed-sewing room of what was then Antinori Bedding Co. destroyed two of the company's three buildings.
"I'm really ruined right now," Antinori told the St. Petersburg Times then. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
He rebuilt. Twenty years later, the renamed American Bedding Industries employed 400, including a son, Michael Antinori.
But Michael Antinori died in June 2002 when a single-engine plane he was piloting crashed. Ten hours earlier, he had crashed his helicopter onto the roof of a Tampa home, surviving. Attempts to reach the elder Antinori Tuesday were unsuccessful.
Altman said there were other reasons for closing the Tampa facility. Leggett's Georgetown, Ky., plant is less than a year old, and it and the California factory are closer to Leggett's customers. Both also produce beds similar to the Orthomatic line.
Times staff researcher Mary Mellstrom contributed to this report, which used information from Times files. Scott Barancik can be reached at barancik@sptimes.com or 727 893-8751.
TO HELP
Tampa Bay area businesses that have job openings for Orthomatic's affected employees may call Orthomatic's general manager, Adam Weinman, at (813) 651-4535.
[Last modified February 2, 2005, 00:31:09]
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