Aside from the subsidies which Burlington’s city council signed off on this week, Alamance Foods has also secured a state-level job investment grant for up to $611,100, another $182,000 in state-sponsored job training, and it may be in the running for a state building reuse grant worth an additional $500,000.
Yet, these assorted state and municipal enticements are still not the sum total of all the publicly-funded incentives which Alamance Foods could potentially receive for this venture.
According to Burlington’s economic developer Peter Bishop, the company expects to draw down an additional $630,000 in cash-based incentives from Alamance County. Although the county’s leaders haven’t publicly uttered a word about such an outlay, there is apparently a move underway to pitch the request to the county’s board of commissioners when it convenes later this month.
Under the county’s policy for corporate incentives, the name of a would-be recipient must be publicly revealed before the commissioners can schedule a hearing on a particular request.
The county’s policy also demands that the specifics of the request are promulgated to the public a week before the hearing actually occurs.
In the case of Alamance Foods, there appears to have been some initial reluctance to divulge this information when the company began to fish around for incentives this past fall.
In fact, the locally-based food processor original presented Burlington’s leaders with an incentives request in November that was conspicuously devoid of a name – although it contained plenty of other details, such as the address of the company’s flagship facility, which effectively gave away its identity. This incipient proposal was ultimately withdrawn before it was formally shared with the council, only to reappear in a modified form after the governor’s office had announced the company’s plans to expand its Burlington plant in early December.
According to David Putnam, the economic development director for Alamance County Area Chamber of Commerce, Alamance Foods is now also in a position to present its request to the county’s board of commissioners.
“We do intend to follow the [county’s incentives] policy,” he added in a conversation with The Alamance News on Tuesday, “and we intend to request a hearing at the next meeting [on January 17].”
Should the commissioners go on to approve the company’s requested outlay for $630,000, it would bring the cumulative value of its taxpayer-funded incentives to $2,653,100 when factoring in Burlington’s proposed contributions, the state’s job training and job investment grant, and the prospective building reuse grant.
See this week’s coverage of Burlington city council’s consideration of incentives package for Alamance Foods: https://alamancenews.com/burlington-pledges-730k-toward-alamance-foods-expansion/
And of the Governor’s announcement about state incentives: https://alamancenews.com/governor-announces-expansion-of-and-state-incentives-for-alamance-foods-in-burlington/
