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Youngstown to pay LaFarge $75K to relocate — again
YOUNGSTOWN
The city will pay $75,000 to a company to “move” to its third location in Youngstown in three years.
The board of control approved the $75,000 payment Friday to LaFarge North America Inc. to move from a location at the Ohio Works Business Park.
The company received $1.4 million from the city to move from Salt Springs Road to Ohio Works, off Division Street, in 2009.
Neither the $75,000 nor the $1.4 million came out of the city’s pocket, said Finance Director David Bozanich, a board of control member.
The city received a $4 million state grant in 2009 to purchase and rehabilitate a 61-acre site on Salt Springs Road used by LaFarge for several years to mine slag. The city paid $1.4 million to LaFarge for the property and used the rest for a new road and the installation of new utility lines there.
Exterran, a natural-gas compression manufacturing company, is investing $13.2 million to build a facility at the former LaFarge site.
As part of the LaFarge sale, the city agreed to give the company a 22-acre site in the city-owned Ohio Works Business Park, near the $650 million V&M Star expansion location.
LaFarge never used the Ohio Works site, however. The city wanted it back for potential development use by either V&M or a company working with V&M, Bozanich said.
V&M has agreed to reimburse the $75,000 to the city, Bozanich said.
LaFarge is still interested in space in the Mahoning Valley, so the city will lease, for $10 a year, an empty, heavy-industrial-zoned, 15-acre parcel on Poland Avenue, east of the Center Street Bridge located on the Youngstown-Campbell line, Bozanich said.
LaFarge wants the property as a distribution facility for its construction-materials business.