A Times Editorial

Juice plant should keep contributing

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 15, 2000

After a year of rumor mongering and community apprehension, Vitality Beverages announced plans to expand, not curtail, production at its Dade City juice-packaging plant. It is welcome news from the county's largest manufacturing employer.

Vitality purchased the former Lykes Bros. Inc. juice-packaging operation in May 1999, and the chief executive acknowledged in a recent interview with Times reporter Kyle Parks that the company seriously considered shutting down its Dade City operations.

Instead, chief executive Bob Peiser said Vitality will seek to bring more production to the plant that dominates the east Pasco economy with a large, blue-collar workforce.

Peiser's proclamation brought an understandable sigh of relief from a community that has no other large-scale manufacturing operation. But economics should be accompanied by civics. We encourage Vitality to extend its commitment to Dade City beyond low-paying jobs for hundreds of workers.

The former Lykes operation did little to endear itself to the community for much of its existence. Though it was the county's top private-sector employer, it avoided the public spotlight, did little to contribute to a better community and even shunned participation in the United Way of Pasco.

Margarita Romo, executive director of Farm-workers Self Help, correctly noted that Lykes benefited from the working poor but did little to help the Tommytown neighborhood where some of the low-wage workers lived.

The corporate attitude changed in 1997 when Lykes reached outside its family for the first time to hire its top executive. Afterward, Lykes Pasco and its affiliates participated fully in the United Way of Pasco campaign for the first time, welcomed community leaders on plant tours and donated $10,000 to the building fund for the new Dade City Chamber of Commerce headquarters.

The community-oriented spirit should continue. As we've said previously, Vitality would serve the area well if it expands the efforts to turn the juice-packaging plant from a large corporate profitmaker into legitimate community partner.

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