152 jobs lost in region closures

One hundred Anderson jobs are moving to Massachusetts as Millipore Corporation announced Monday that its Anderson facility at 6100 Bellevue Lane will close April 30.

The company plans to consolidate operations of the Anderson facility with those of a facility in Danverse, Mass., "to keep pace with expansion," Karen Hall, director of corporate communications. "The Anderson location couldn't support the expansion."

Despite a global recession, "this area of our business is expanding rapidly," Hall explained. The line of products involves disposable bio-pharmaceutical supplies.

"These are the types of companies we like to keep around," Shasta County Economic Development Corporation President Greg O'Sullivan said of industries that export products outside of the area. "They import a great deal more revenue than they use up."

"The impact comes from the loss of wages to those employees, it reverberates through the whole economy,"Anderson City Manager Scott Morgan said.

O'Sullivan credited the EDC for originally recruiting Millipore to Shasta County in 2006.

"We target medical device industry because they're typically more recession proof," O'Sullivan said.

Old Town Eatery is closed

The Old Town Eatery in Cottonwood closed March 2 with $1,266,096.01 in tax liens on the business from the Internal Revenue Service, according to records at the Shasta County Assessor-Recorder's office. Over $1 million of which was due to unpaid payroll taxes from 2002 through 2008. Unpaid Federal Unemployment Tax was less than $25,000 of the total lien amount.

Employees would not be held accountable for unpaid payroll taxes, according to Certified Public Accountant David Scott of D.H. Scott and Company in Redding.

"Typically the employer is responsible," Scott said.

When asked how much is still owed to the IRS, business partner to Old Town Eatery Jim Thompson said, "I don't know, that's something I'm talking to a lawyer about."

When asked how the 13-year-old business had changed its business practices in 2002 to receive multiple Federal Tax Liens every year since, Thompson replied he did not do anything different.

"I don't know what's going to happen, I haven't been through this process before," Thompson said.

Thompson said, however, that the business closure was not just due to the multitude of tax liens on the property.

"I couldn't see working 80 hours a week and not making a profit," Thompson said. "Every year we've had an increase in sales until two years ago. But in the last ten months, we've seen a steep decline in sales."

The 13-year-old restaurant, located at 20828 Front St., employed 18 people.

"I want to see that restaurant reopen. It was very valuable to the area," said Judith Klages, owner of Country Lane, a year-round Christmas decor boutique also on Front Street. "It's a loss of foot traffic for us. People came from all over to eat there."

Sunset Moulding

A supplier of interior moulding in new residential homes, Sunset Moulding will close its Cottonwood division later this month. The plant employed more than 30 people before cutting back from full production in February.

CEO John Morrison cited an increasingly poor residential market as the main reason the plant was to close. Four employees accepted jobs at the company's Chico division, others declined due to the long commute, Morrison said.

Covanta Energy

A Covanta Energy regional office that managed several biomass facilities in the north state closed Feb. 27. The office consisted of eight employees, mostly accountants, who did not choose to relocate to the destination office in Salida, according to Mike Norris, Vice President Regional Business Manager. The office was located in Anderson for about 4 years. The company owns biomass plants in Burney, Lassen, and Oroville.