Twinsburg is poised to get a distribution center, operated by online retail giant Amazon and home to 150 full-time equivalent jobs.
Members of the state’s Ohio Tax Credit Authority this week approved a Job Creation Tax Credit, part of a financial incentive package aimed at encouraging Amazon to open the distribution center in the northern Summit County community.
The state, in a document called a “Scope of Work,” said Amazon expects to create 150 full-time equivalent jobs generating nearly $4.1 million in annual payroll by the end of 2019. Using these numbers, a full-time job would pay an average of about $27,300 a year. . However, Twinsburg’s planning director Larry Finch on Tuesday said the developer constructing the distribution center — Scannell Properties of Indiana — has said the facility would employ 300 part-time workers and 10 full-time employees.
The value of the tax credit is an estimated $270,000, not a large amount compared with other tax credits OK’d by the authority, part of the Ohio Development Services Agency.
The tax credit would be paid over a six-year period. Amazon must maintain the facility for nine years.
Finch said he assumes that Amazon is the undisclosed tenant for the 248,000 square-foot distribution center that Scannell Properties is developing. Scannell is building the facility at the Cornerstone Business Park, at the former Chrysler Stamping Plant at 2000 Aurora Road.
Earlier this month, Twinsburg City Council approved a property tax-abatement agreement for the undisclosed tenant. Documents don’t name the tenant because of a nondisclosure agreement between the tenant and the developer, Scannell Properties, Finch said.
Chrysler ceased manufacturing at the stamping plant in 2010. Scannell Properties and DiGeronimo Cos. of Independence later bought the 165-acre property and razed the plant to create Cornerstone Business Park. The site is now home to a 300,000 square-foot plus FedEx facility and a 200,000 square-foot multi-tenant building.
Amazon calls its distribution centers “fulfillment centers.” The Twinsburg facility is smaller than two fulfillment centers that Amazon plans for central Ohio. Amazon has said these fulfillment centers — one in Etna, in Licking County, and the other in Obetz, in Franklin County, would generate the equivalent of 2,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
Ohio’s Tax Credit Authority last year granted a Job Creation Tax Credit valued at about $17.5 million for the central Ohio facilities.
Amazon also is planning to open three data centers in central Ohio. These centers — in Dublin, Hilliard and New Albany — would together employ 120 workers, each receiving an average annual pay of $80,000, Amazon has said.
Amazon, headquartered in Seattle, has not commented on the Twinsburg project. Once companies are approved for state tax credit, they must prove, through reporting to the Development Services Agency, that they have created the minimum number of jobs outlined in agreements covering the credits.
Ohio Job Creation Tax Credits are measured as a percentage of the state income tax withholdings for all new employees hired under the tax credit program.
Katie Byard can be reached at 330-996-3781 or kbyard@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her @KatieByardABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/KatieByardABJ.