Rocket Co. Considers Fla. Factory

By JEANNINE RELLY, AP

CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) - A Texas rocket company whose proposed factory on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix has faced stiff opposition said Monday it may instead build the facility near Florida's Cape Canaveral. Beal Aerospace Technologies Inc. has been searching for sites to build and launch rockets carrying satellites for private companies. Beal said the Florida government had offered it a package of tax incentives and grants.

``We're evaluating the proposal from Florida,'' Beal spokesman Wade Gates said in a telephone interview from the company's headquarters in Frisco, Texas. ``Our first choice is still St. Croix.''

Gates would not reveal details of the Florida offer. The company had promised to invest $50 million and create at least 130 jobs on St. Croix, where the jobless rate of 8.5 percent is about twice the national average. The plan was to assemble the rockets on St. Croix's southern coast and launch them from tiny Sombrero Island, part of the British Caribbean territory of Anguilla.

But environmentalists managed to delay plans in Anguilla. And in the Virgin Islands, a court declared a land deal between the territorial government and the company illegal on Dec. 22. Under the deal, Beal planned to build its headquarters and an assembly plant on historic land that contains pre-Columbian and colonial-era ruins. In exchange, Beal was to give the government land it owns in an industrial area of St. Croix. Angry residents sued the government in October.

A court still has to rule on a second suit filed by environmentalists, who say Beal could damage the area's fragile coral and wetlands.

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