Factory

Osualdo "Gordo" Robles, a reputed North Philadelphia drug dealer, was jailed without bail yesterday pending trial on federal charges of ordering the torching of the abandoned Quaker Lace factory last September. Robles, 47, was held on federal arson and conspiracy charges by U.S. Magistrate Judge Edwin Naythons. Police arrested Robles on March 15 and accused him of hiring a juvenile and two young men to set fire to the factory at 4th Street and Lehigh Avenue because police were using it to spy on drug dealers.

Carl D. Rapp, Philadelphia Gear Corp.'s new chief executive officer, played pro basketball in Europe 20 years ago. Now, he wants to teach the fast break to the 110-year-old company, which last year closed its landmark King of Prussia factory to focus on inspecting and repairing gearboxes instead of making them. For Philadelphia Gear to survive, it has to change from a manufacturer that would take years to design and make metal gears up to 16 feet in diameter to a service company that responds almost immediately when a machine breaks, Rapp said.

Dwarfed in the large factory, the last four women scoot from Singer to Singer, stamping on dirty metal pedals, holding the fabric taut as needles furiously pump the hems with blue. Beatrice Ochipinti started at 6:30 a.m., an early start for the 78-year-old manager who has walked one block from home to work for 52 years. Tomorrow is the seamstresses' last day. Bendinger Bros. Uniforms is closing its Mullica Hill factory, saying that many of the seamstresses have simply gotten too old, or died, and that cheap labor is easily found overseas.

General Electric Co. said yesterday that it would close a factory in Southwest Philadelphia that once employed 7,000 people, putting the last 216 out of work by September 2002. About half of the employees are eligible for early retirement, the company said. The announcement sets in motion a 45-day negotiating period with unions representing 180 production and drafting employees, although a union official said it seemed unlikely that the negotiations would bear fruit. The plant, at 69th Street and Elmwood Avenue, was opened in 1924, and was expanded steadily until the early 1970s, when GE, of Fairfield, Conn.

As the nylon-stocking industry grew in the 1940s, a factory specializing in sewing needles for mills making silk and cotton stockings went out of business. The factory's buildings limped along as commercial space for more than 50 years, often in poor condition and not fully rented. But the turn of the century brought a turn for the better for the Royersford property. In 2000, it was purchased, refurbished outside, and rebuilt inside to create the Needleworks, 44 contemporary, mostly two-story apartments.

The heat was wilting everyone's clothing. The humidity was curling everyone's hair. It was the perfect day to open a new air-conditioner factory. As the sun beat down on Northeast Philadelphia yesterday, ICC Technologies Inc. showed off its new manufacturing plant at the Arsenal Business Center. Approximately 19,000 square feet of the old Frankford Arsenal will be used for ICC's new manufacturing operations, to build coolers and dehumidifiers for supermarkets, department stores, office buildings and ice rinks.

A crew from the Rutgers Center for Public Archaeology will begin within the next couple of weeks to dig through what appears to be the remains of 19th- century factory buildings at the historic Smithville Mansion in Eastampton. The foundations and a turbine pit were discovered by Burlington County workers who were excavating the area to prepare for a $2 million project to replace the deteriorating 52-year-old Smithville dam, according to Joseph Caruso, the county's bridge engineer.

At the precise moment the inaugural parade was beginning its march past President Clinton's reviewing stand on Wednesday afternoon, the 104 employees of Nabisco's margarine factory in Pennsauken filed into a meeting with their bosses. The news for the workers was not of American renewal but of layoffs. After 31 years in Pennsauken, Nabisco was closing the factory and sending the work to a modern plant in Indianapolis. As for the workers' future, the company said it might have openings elsewhere, but made no guarantees.

It's a mammoth building, a 100-year-old symbol of what was, sitting across the Schuylkill from the gleaming hotel that is, a little more than a stone's throw from the highway interchange that determined what will be. The looming rectangular structure looks every bit its age. A coat of battleship gray paint covers but doesn't hide the crumbling brick facade. Paraphernalia of heavy industry lays strewn about the grassy lot. Above the entrance, a bright green sign greets the office workers who care to look as they drive across the Matsonford Bridge to their white-collar workplaces in Conshohocken.

Without uttering a word, Caroline Guy followed a coworker into the Van Leer Container factory in Warminster and shot the Philadelphia woman three times, ending the life of a worker who had just scrimped and saved enough to buy a house. Guy's crime of Aug. 28, 1995, was met with the punishment of life imprisonment without parole in Bucks County Court. Found guilty Friday of first-degree murder but mentally ill, Guy will spend her years either in prison or a mental hospital.