Urbana City Schools board unanimously approved a 100 percent, 10-year tax abatement for a new Navistar warehousing facility on Phoenix Drive at its Tuesday meeting.
The Community Reinvestment Act tax abatement still needs approval from Urbana City Council and Ohio Hi-Point. Ohio Hi-Point’s was expected to vote on the abatement at its Wednesday meeting.
The new facility would be located at 915 Phoenix Drive, on land owned by Damewood Enterprises Limited. The land is currently classified for agricultural use. Navistar would lease operations on the property out of a new 355,522 square foot warehouse facility on the site. The new building will allow Navistar to consolidate existing operations in Urbana and Xenia as part of a joint venture with General Motors, according to the tax abatement application presented to the school board and city council last month. It is estimated the new facility will cost $12 million to build and will house $16 million in inventory.
An estimated 114 employees would be moved from Navistar’s existing Edgewood Avenue facility in Urbana to the new site. An estimated 27 employees would be moved from the Bellbrook Avenue, Xenia, Ohio, facility; and approximately 13 full-time employees are predicted to be hired for the new warehouse, according to the application. The abatement application estimated new employees will have $572,000 in payroll; adding that to the $4.954 million current payroll for those in Urbana now, and $1.263 million from the employees in Bellbrook, would total $6.789 million in payroll at the new site.
The number of new full-time employees changed from the 39 previously reported, due to a clerical error in the application, Champaign County Economic Development Director Marcia Bailey said. The amount of payroll for the employees did not match the number of employees, so she checked with Navistar to clarify. They discovered the payroll amount was correct, but the number of employees had been incorrectly entered.
If the abatement is approved by the city, construction is estimated to begin in March, and end in December.
