Explanation
BACKGROUND: The Tax Incentive Review Council (TIRC) recommended on August 25, 2006, that the Enterprise Zone Agreement with Superior Production Partnership ("Superior") be amended to reduce the job creation goal to 24 jobs, to extend the period for the job creation to December 31, 2009, to acknowledge that the project investment has been larger and taken more time than initially anticipated and to extend the investment period to June 30, 2005 so that this investment is eligible for the exemptions under the Enterprise Zone Agreement with Superior ("EZA"). This legislation authorizes the Director of the Department of Development to amend the EZA accordingly.
The EZA was authorized by City Council on July 14, 2003 and was entered into effective November 3, 2003. Superior is a die and stamping manufacturer that was founded in Columbus in 1914 and is located at 2301 Fairwood Avenue in the city's south side. The EZA project is an expansion to support a new vehicle hood line. The EZA calls for a total of $4.8 million in investment, including $300,000 in real property acquisition, $1.5 million in real property improvements, $450,000 in new machinery and equipment and $50,000 in new furniture and fixtures. Existing average value of inventory, $2.5 million, is be retained at the project site. It was anticipated that the project investment would be completed by February 2004 and that 129 jobs would be retained and 32 jobs created by December 31, 2006. The EZA grants a 60%/7-yr abatement on real property improvements and new personal property.
Superior brought the first of its new vehicle hoods to market in 2004 at which time a group of Taiwanese companies launched stiff price competition and have captured one of Superior's major U.S. customers. The labor costs of the Taiwanese companies are at most one-fifth of what Superior pays. The company decided that to meet this challenge it had to develop a larger production capacity than initially pl...
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