While comparisons to Nostradamus might be a little far fetched, Carroll County officials obviously caught a glimpse of the future in late June when they signed a performance agreement to retain Mohawk Industries for 7.5 years.

Four months after the Carroll County Board of Supervisors and the Carroll County IDA agreed to pay $280,000 to alleviate power issues at the Hillsville plant, Mohawk Industries announced last week it would close its Waynesboro plant in December, leaving 120 employees without jobs. Carroll County’s payment to the company went toward an $800,000 omniverter that serves as a backup power system. A high-ranking Mohawk executive said the company lost more than $1 million in lost productivity and waste since 2006 because of power outages in Hillsville. As part of the performance agreement, the company agreed to utilize and operate its Carroll County facility for 7.5 years with a staffing level of at least 105 full-time employees.

While Carroll County Administrator Gary Larrowe wouldn’t say whether Mohawk threatened to leave if the power issues were not solved, he said the company made it crystal clear those problems needed to be alleviated soon.

“They did not hold anything back,” Larrowe said. “They were very informative in that whole arena.”

Hurt by the slumping housing market and decreasing demand for carpet, Mohawk eliminated 113 jobs at the Waynesboro plant earlier in the year before announcing the closing. While Mohawk is the largest flooring producer in the world, it has not escaped the effects of a carpet market that has declined by 35 percent over the past four years.

By signing the performance agreement with Mohawk in June, Carroll County was able to retain the local plant and its 154 workers.

“If we had not taken care of the power issue, we could have very well been in the same situation as Waynesboro. Now we have a performance agreement with Mohawk that ties them to this community for an additional seven years in some form or fashion,” Larrowe said. “But they are tickled to death with Carroll County. Their Vice President called me and told me that he is very encouraged and has been all along about the support they received from Carroll County.”

Larrowe said retaining those 154 jobs was vitally important to the community and the families of those local employees. He said the Carroll County plant will be receiving a small amount of equipment from the Waynesboro plant. In addition to the new omniverter, he said Mohawk is investing close to $2 million in capital improvement to the Carroll County plant, which is about 50 percent more than what the performance agreement called for four months ago.

“We invested in the future of that company and this community by working through the agreement that had been an ongoing problem since they had been here,” Larrowe said. “Business retention is vital in our community as well as trying to expand our base of corporate citizens.”

As part of the performance agreement, Mohawk must repay the county’s portion of the omniverter, plus 20 percent liquidated damages, if it breaches any portion of the agreement. Default payments would be set on a sliding scale (the company would repay the IDA $336,000 if it breaches the contract in the first year as opposed to $67,202 if the contract were breached after seven years).