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Major company planning to use Austintown facility
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County commissioners soon will consider a 60 percent, 10-year real-estate tax abatement for the reuse of a former Austintown warehouse by a publicly traded Fortune 500 Ohio manufacturing company.
The company plans to transfer 106 Ohio jobs and create 143 jobs there, an economic development official told the commissioners.
The Enterprise Zone agreement containing the tax abatement, which was approved Nov. 14 by the Austintown trustees, is being reviewed by the county prosecutor’s office and will come before the county commissioners in a week or two, Sarah Lown, public finance manager with the Western Reserve Port Authority, said Thursday.
The tax abatement would be for the Westlake-based Nordson Xaloy Inc. for building renovations at 375 Victoria Road, which is the former Tamarkin building, which was a Giant Eagle retail support center for frozen foods.
A labor dispute led Giant Eagle to close the Tamarkin warehouse in May 2015.
Nordson, which is leasing the building from Giant Eagle, plans to consolidate its screw and barrel operations into a manufacturing center in the Victoria Road building.
The tax abatement would save the company $149,300.
The company, which operates in more than 30 countries, would invest about $25 million into the Austintown facility – $23.5 million in machinery and equipment, $1 million in building improvements, and $500,000 in furniture and fixtures.
“It’s very good to have that back in productive use,” Lown told the commissioners.
“We need the jobs because [General Motors] Lordstown will be downsizing,” by 1,245 jobs when it abolishes its third shift Jan. 23, said Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chairwoman of the county commissioners.
Nordson will consolidate 106 full-time, permanent, skilled industrial jobs in its Cleveland area and Boardman locations into the Austintown building, where it plans to create 143 full-time, permanent jobs within the next two years.
The project would result in retention of $3.33 million in annual Ohio payroll and addition of an estimated $7,650,500 in annual payroll, the company said.
“They shopped all around the country, and they elected to locate here, in part because they had two operations in Northeast Ohio,” Lown said.
“It was a real value-added proposal by moving into that building, instead of building new,” she added.