East Coast Repair and Fabrication — a ship repair and fabrication company — broke ground Tuesday on a new corporate headquarters in Newport News’s Southeast Community.
S23 Holdings, a holding company that owns ECR, is investing $64.4 million to build the facility at 1511 Harbor Lane — a site that once contained the Harbor Homes public housing complex. The expansion will bring more than 330 new jobs to the area over the next five years.
“S23 has already been doing incredible work in our city, and their expansion is creating jobs for residents in this community and beyond,” Mayor McKinley Price said during a groundbreaking ceremony.
Price noted that Jorge Rivera, chief executive and founder of S23 and East Coast Repair and Fabrication, is committed to “hiring and training local.”
“Jorge, you are setting the standard for future commercial development in this community,” Price said.
The average pay for the new jobs will be more than $51,000, the Newport News Economic Development Authority previously reported.
Site plans shown at the groundbreaking call for a 52,200-square-foot building that will include corporate offices and warehouse space. Newport News Department of Development Director Florence Kingston said a smaller existing building on the site will be repurposed into a training facility. Kingston also said there’s room for possible expansion on an adjacent parcel of land.
Newport News City Manager Cindy Rohlf said the jobs being created “will uplift our residents” and that the training facility “will truly change lives.”
“We are thrilled that this groundbreaking has arrived and that this project is coming to fruition,” she said.
The headquarters building will be ready for occupancy by December 2023.