FALL RIVER – Silver Line Building Products LLC is ending manufacturing at its 200,000-square-foot factory in Fall River today, laying off 287 workers and leaving in place only a few dozen office staffers, The Herald News reported today.

The North Brunswick, N.J.-based maker of vinyl windows and patio doors has seen demand for its products fall rapidly since the housing market collapsed in 2006, Maureen McDonough, a spokeswoman for Silver Line’s parent company, privately-held Anderson Corp., told the newspaper.

Joseph Viana, director of the Fall River Career Center, told The Herald News the workers losing their jobs include 136 Fall River residents, 21 New Bedford residents, and 20 people from Somerset, Swansea, Westport and Dartmouth. The roughly 100 other workers hail from communities in Rhode Island.

The factory now being closed was built by Silver Line in the Fall River Industrial Park less than six years ago. The company received tax breaks from the government to expand there, and then-Gov. Mitt Romney and other dignitaries attended a July 2003 groundbreaking ceremony for the facility, according to the Fall River Office of Economic Development.

“Everyone we have met since we began the site selection process – from officials at the highest levels of city and state government on down to people on the streets and in coffee shops – has made us feel wanted and welcome,” Kenneth Silverman, Silver Line’s chairman and CEO, said at the time. “This is a community that we are proud to become a part of.”

The Fall River plant’s closure was first reported in May by Shelter magazine, a building industry trade publication.

In a March 12 letter obtained by the magazine, Randy Iles, Silver Line’s president, wrote: “Market share growth cannot enable any business to be successful when the overall size of the market declines as rapidly as the housing industry. Costs must be lowered to offset the loss in volume.”

McDonough told The Herald News that Silver Line’s Fall River work force has fallen from a high of more than 500 workers a few years ago. Although a skeleton staff will remain, she said the closure “appears to be permanent.”

Last October, Silver Line closed another recently-built facility, this one located in Durham, N.C., and 428 employees there lost their jobs, according to The News & Observer.

The Fall River plant is the only one of Silver Line’s five remaining facilities that is being closed at this time, McDonough said. Workers were told in May that their jobs were being eliminated.

McDonough declined to tell The Herald News why the Fall River site was chosen, but in May she told Shelter magazine that all the company’s “plants have the same capabilities, so the Fall River business can be moved to other facilities.”