The Chesterton Tax
Abatement Advisory Committee has endorsed a 10-year abatement for a
20,000-square foot addition at the Andritz Herr-Voss Stamco Inc. facility,
located in the Jack Oremus Industrial Park, 1079-1 Industry Drive, on the
far west side of town off Ind. 149.
Members voted
unanimously to endorse the abatement at a meeting Thursday afternoon.
The Town Council
must now formally approve the abatement.
Andritz Herr-Voss
Stamco--which produces steel rolls for the steel, paper, and aluminum
industries--is the most current iteration of a company which has been in
business at Jack Oremus for some 20 years, and is the tenant of the
industrial park’s owner, Chester Inc. In 1999, the Town Council granted the
company a 10-year abatement, which has since expired.
As Associate Town
Attorney Julie Paulson noted, the new abatement--if granted by the Town
Council--would apply only to the increment of assessed valuation,
estimated at $1.46 million, of the 20,000-square foot addition, not
to the total AV of the entire facility.
Andritz Herr-Voss
Stamco currently employs 52 with an annual payroll of $1,980,000. Thirteen
more full-time employees would be hired to staff the addition, with a
payroll of $522,000. The addition is projected to generate--following full
tax phase-in--$38,000 in property taxes.
Work on the
addition is scheduled to begin sometime this month and be completed on April
30.
The Advisory
Committee did recommend that the Town Council consider two conditions on the
abatement. The first: that Town of Chesterton residents be given preference
for hiring, consistent with their qualifications; and that Andritz Herr-Voss
Stamco annually donate 15 percent of the amount which it would have paid in
property taxes to a local public or not-for-profit entity. Pete Peuquet of
Chester Inc. expressed the hope that the 15-percent donation might be made
to the Duneland School Corporation.