The Chautauqua County IDA board and staff during the February 27, 2018 board meeting in Jamestown.
JAMESTOWN – The County of Chautauqua Industrial Development Agency has approved tax break for a $16 million commercial development project in the north county.
On Tuesday morning the IDA board of directors unanimously approved a 20-year PILOT schedule with deviation for 320 Roberts Road Freezer, LLC.
The 80,000 sq. ft. project involves the construction of a cold storage warehouse for Fieldbrook Foods in Dunkirk for storage of its product before sending it out to market. Before building the new state-of-the-art freezer, another larger building on the site must be demolished with environmental abatement also necessary.
Specific details of the tax breaks include a PILOT agreement on property taxes over a 20 year period, which would entail total combined Payments in Lieu of Taxes of $2 million to the city of Dunkirk, Dunkirk School District and the county during that time period. In addition, both the sales tax and mortgage taxes would be waived.
Because the project is being built on land that was previously owned by the county, IDA officials felt it was a no-brainer to move forward with the tax incentives in order to get the facility back on the tax rolls. During the deviation hearing, no municipalities appeared to speak on the matter, though IDA acting director Richard Dixon did tell the IDA board that the officials he spoke with were all in favor of the project and related PILOT agreement.
As for the economic impact, the project would bring in 150 short-term construction jobs and, once open, an additional 6 to 10 people would be employed to work inside the cold storage facility.
The Krog Group (Orchard Park, NY) is serving as the developer of the project, with the facility being turned over to Sonwil Distribution once completed. Sonwil will then lease the property to Fieldbrook Foods.
The entire project is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, the IDA board also met with officials from Memphis-based non profit Housing Preservation Inc. to learn more about its plan to purchase 200 housing units in Jamestown and Falconer from Lutheran.
The units are currently used to provide housing to low income seniors and according to officials with the organization, they would continue to serve those types of residents if they were to move forward with purchasing the property.
Lutheran is tax exempt but does make a payment to the city of Jamestown of about $13,000 to $15,000 a year and Housing Preservation said it would double that amount if it were to take control of the units. There was no indication if a similar arrangement would also be made for the units in Falconer.
Specifically, the locations are 8 and 9 Crane Street and 803 North Main Street in Jamestown and 430 East Avenue is in Falconer. Each location contains 12 to 46 units.
The group is seeking a Payment in Lieu of Tax (PILOT) agreement over a 29 year period. The IDA board acted on a preliminary resolution involving the project to keep it moving forward. A deviation hearing on the agreement will take place next month prior to final authorization being acted on by the IDA board.
Leave a Reply