Apr. 11--HOMETOWN -- No one works any more at the mammoth Rush Township plant that once employed more people than any other facility in Schuylkill County.

On Friday, locked gates and empty parking lots surrounded the 500,000-square-foot former J.E. Morgan Knitting Mills Inc. factory, where as many as 1,100 workers once produced clothing known and worn across the globe.

One trailer sat in a loading dock, while three sport utility vehicles occupied various parking spaces around the 143 Mahanoy Ave., Route 54, factory. No one manned the security booth that controls all entry to the property.

It is a sad end to the plant, which owner Hanesbrands Inc., Winston-Salem, N.C., had turned into a distribution center. The property is for sale; a sign in front listed CB Richard Ellis, Los Angeles, as a broker, but Joseph McDermott, senior vice president at that company's Wayne office and the man listed as a contact for inquiries, was not available for comment Friday on whether there has been any interest in it.

Hanesbrands has ended operations at both the plant and its distribution center in Tidewood Industrial Park, Hometown, costing the area 155 jobs between the two sites.

Matthew Hall, a spokesman for Hanesbrands, was not available Friday for comment on the company's moves.

The end of operations marks the end of a business founded in 1945 in Tamaqua by industrialist and philanthropist John E. Morgan.

He opened the plant in 1969, and by the time he sold it in 1984 to Dawson International, Scotland, 1,100 people worked there.

"At one point, that was the biggest employer in Schuylkill County," Rush Township supervisors Chairman William J. Sanchez Jr. said Friday.

Sara Lee bought the company in 1999 from Dawson. By that time, the company included the plant, the distribution center, a smaller facility in Hometown and an outlet store at the Five Points intersection in Tamaqua.

Layoffs began in 2002, when Sara Lee eliminated 460 jobs.

Sanchez said the future of the property is unknown.

"I have no clue. I haven't heard anything of anything going in there," he said.

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