A Florida-based firm now seeking nearly $1 million in state and local incentives for an LED light assembly plant in Bettendorf proposed a similar facility less than a year ago in Ulster County, New York.
That project in Kingston, New York never materialized. The light assembly plant there would have been housed in a vacant IBM facility now being redeveloped. State development officials turned down his request there for financial support.
As with that project, LEDS America President Joel Westermarck is promising the Bettendorf facility would replace manufacturing jobs now in China and employ more than 100 people assembling lights utilizing high-efficiency Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology.
The company is seeking Tax Increment Financing (TIF) incentives totaling $475,000 over 10 years to build a 7,200-square-foot office building and a 13,000-square-foot assembly building on land east of Interstate 74, north of Tanglefoot Lane.
Total cost of the two buildings is projected to be nearly $2 million. In addition to city TIF rebates, property owners/developers Alan Frankel and Doug Borgeson and Westermarck are planning to seek loans and grant monies totaling $400,000 from the Iowa Department of Economic Development.
The developers also say they hope to obtain additional funds from the Bi-State Regional Commission, the Small Business Administration and a local bank.
The city council July 19 -- without any discussion about the TIF projects -- scheduled a public hearing for Tuesday, Aug. 2. The council could approve the TIF agreements immediately after the public hearing.
The I-74 Technology Park being developed by Frankel and Borgeson was approved as a TIF district in August 2009, with the requirement that each new development would need to be brought to the city council for review and approval.
An early project consisting primarily of office space was proposed for the technology park in 2010, but that plan was later scrapped. One of the requirements for obtaining TIF rebates at the technology park is the operation must be a "primary" business which creates new jobs in the community.
