There Is A Price
| With great fanfare, the
announcement came out last week about the new
South Korean
business opening in Loudon bringing 600 jobs. Some information was
not included with the announcement.
The new industry is located in the Huntington Business Park in Loudon. The park is on Hwy 72, just across from Monterey Mushrooms. The land is owned by TENN-X LLC, the building is owned by Joe Hollingsworth, Hollingsworth Companies. The business owner is Hanon Systems, who specialize in automotive heating and cooling components for automobiles. Hanon will be leasing the building from Hollingsworth for about 1.6 million per year according to the leasing documents. See below. The state has committed a lot of financial incentives and unfortunately, Loudon County and Loudon City have committed millions in tax break incentivizes also. Without the county's approval, which is legal, Loudon City has committed the county and city to a five year Payment In Lieu Of Taxes, PILOT. The company will pay a much lower property tax for the next five years. Their combined city and county property tax will be, $288,207.00, $121,047.00 to the city and $167,160.00 to the county each year. That's about an 1.5 million per year reduction in property taxes as would be due on $170,000,000.00 investment. I hate to call this corporate welfare but I haven't seen the city bending over to give tax breaks to the average citizens. Everyone certainly hopes the new company will do great and be successful and be here for many years. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. Back in the late 90's, another new company, John Deere, came to Loudon with much the same fanfare as Hanon. Going to produce hundreds of high paying jobs. The city and the county spent millions in land acquisitions utility upgrades and tax breaks. Less than five years later, John Deere closed down the Loudon plant laying off hundreds of people and left the county and city holding the bag again. There is a great risk and cost to government funding for private industry. And of course when some don't pay their share of property taxes, all other tax payers have to pick up the bill. No doubt, some of those 600 employees will bring new students to the school system. Below are links of interest on the Hanon Project. Click Here For Building And Site Information |
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8/7/23