News
- Plans for 93 full-time jobs announced
- 12/9/2011
Manzella Worldwide LLC plans to add 93 full-time jobs and invest at least $2.5 million in its local glove manufacturing operation within four years under a proposed economic incentive agreement with local government.
The proposed agreement resulted from about 14 months of negotiations between Manzella, Wilkes Economic Development Corp. (EDC), Wilkes County and Wilkesboro officials.
Manzella currently has about 75 full-time employees working in part of the former Kmart building in Wilkesboro, which Manzella owns, and in leased space in the former Carolina Mirror factory building in North Wilkesboro.
Wilkes EDC President Jeff Garstka said Manzella is operating near capacity in its current local facilities and needs more manufacturing space to accommodate increased demand for its products.
Manzella, based in Orchard Park, N.Y., produces cut-resistant gloves used in the food processing, auto manufacturing and other manufacturing processes.
Local officials said the deal was temporarily suspended this fall when Wilkes County commissioners decided against buying a former Golden Needles Knitting glove manufacturing building on Golden Needles Street in Wilkesboro because of county government’s mounting expenses from New River Behavioral HealthCare’s financial collapse.
The plan had been for county government to buy the 84,000-square-foot building for about $660,000 from the bank that acquired it through foreclosure and lease it to Manzella under a lease-purchase contract. The EDC had an option to buy the property from the bank and was going to transfer the option to the county.
The plan now is for Manzella to buy the property, consisting of 12.50 acres and buildings, from the current private owner and move its glove manufacturing operations there from elsewhere in the Wilkesboros as part of the company’s expansion.
He said Manzella officials plan to move all of the company’s local manufacturing operations to the former Golden Needles facility in three or four years and hope to construct an addition of about 40,000 square feet.
In addition to buying the property on Golden Needles Street, totaling about 12.50 acres, the pro-posed agreement calls for Manzella to maintain its current full-time jobs in Wilkes and add 93 more full-time jobs within four years of the execution of the agreement. It requires that Manzella main-tain all of these jobs for at least seven years.
The proposed agreement requires that Manzella invest at least $2.5 million in business personal property over a four-year period beginning with execution of the agreement. The business per-sonal property includes sewing equipment. This includes listing $800,000 in business personal property by Jan. 1, 2012; another $600,000 by Jan. 1, 2013, another $600,000 by Jan. 1, 2014, and another $500,000 by Jan. 1, 2015.
Under the proposed agreement, these tax listings must be maintained the entire seven years.
In a meeting this morning, the EDC board voted to appropriate $10,000 from its LEAP Fund to Manzella to go toward the company’s purchase of the property on Golden Needles Street.
County commissioners on Tuesday night unanimously agreed to have a public hearing at 7 p.m. Dec. 20 on their proposed portion of the incentive package.
The county’s proposed commitment includes annual payments equal to 90 percent of Manzella’s county taxes on business personal property added annually in the first four of the seven years and annual payments equal to 80 percent of Manzella’s county taxes on business personal property added in the last three of the seven years.
County Attorney Tony Triplett said these actual amounts of money paid by the county, which must factor in annual depreciation of equipment, haven’t been calculated yet. He said they would be presented at the public hearing.
He said county government’s incentive payments also include 70 percent of Manzella’s real county property taxes on the 12.50 acres and buildings it acquires on Golden Needles Street in the first four years. Annual real county property tax payments on the property now are $7,634, based on a value of $1.17 million.
The proposed agreement also calls for county government to apply for an N.C. Rural Economic Development Center grant to fund half the cost of upfitting the former Golden Needles facility and for the county to fund a 5 percent local match for the grant.
Garstka said the cost of upfitting the facility is estimated at a little over $300,000. Five percent of about half of $300,000 is $7,500.
The Wilkesboro Town Council is considering participating in the incentive agreement also, al-though the council hasn’t yet set a public hearing date. Wilkesboro Town Manager Ken Noland said Wilkesboro’s proposed participation is to pay Manzella 80 percent of the business personal property taxes paid by the company on its $2.5 million investment each year for the first four years of the incentive agreement period.
