Colorado Offers Incentives For I-25 Pedestrian Bridge, Indoor Farm Proposals
Colorado Economic Development Commission members (L to R) Tara Marshall, Denise Brown and Tom Clark listen Thursday to a presentation on a company seeking incentives to grow in the state.
Colorado Offers Incentives For I-25 Pedestrian Bridge, Indoor Farm Proposals
By Ed Sealover – Reporter, Denver Business Journal
Feb 15, 2018
The Colorado Economic Development Commission on Thursday offered job growth incentive money to a large firm proposing to build a pedestrian bridge across Interstate 25 and another newer business that reported just $300,000 in revenue last year but $185 million cash on hand.
The joint offerings — part of a trio of decisions made by the EDC that involved a combined $8.6 million in incentives aimed at bringing 1,498 new positions to the Denver and Boulder areas — demonstrated an increased willingness to bet on new technologies and companies. EDC members also agreed to give $104,215 to a new documentary film being shot by former Colorado Public Radio arts reporter Corey Jones.
The biggest deal of the three offered Thursday involves an unnamed publicly traded provider of information technology products calling itself “Project 5760” — most proposals get pseudonyms as they are being considered — that is looking to add some 1,300 workers to an existing facility in Arapahoe County.
Those jobs would add to 1,500 employees the company already has in Colorado as part of its 18,000-person global workforce and would pay an average of $79,150 annually, said Rebecca Gillis, a global business manager for the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.
In addition to growing its local worker base substantially, the company said it would construct a $10 million pedestrian bridge across I-25 near Dry Creek Road to allow its workers to park and cross the highway. EDC member Tom Clark, the former executive director of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., said such an offer by a company was “extraordinary.”
Still, EDC members Tara Marshall and Denise Brown balked at the proposed offering of $4.55 million in strategic-fund money to the company. The two said the total represents most of the $5 million OEDIT receives annually from the Colorado Legislature for that specific fund and would mean that the office would have to curtail its pipeline of other opportunities.
Marshall’s counter-proposal to offer just $3.25 million instead — a figure representing $2,500 per job — was rejected by the commission. Instead, the commission OK'd the $4.55 million in incentives after company officials at the meeting hinted that any reduction in funding likely would mean they would expand instead in Nevada.
“This company has been a strong job creator in the past,” argued Sam Bailey, vice president of the Metro Denver EDC. “This is a highly competitive project, and the competing state is highly skilled competition with the resources to secure a project like this.”
The commission was unanimous in offering $1.02 million in job-growth incentive tax credits to a five-year-old agricultural technology company headquartered in San Francisco company behind “Project Peach.” The unidentified company is looking to build its first full-scale indoor farm where it would harvest food year-round largely for the local market and would hire 43 people at an average annual wage of $84,167.
It did not identify where along the Front Range it would locate the facility, as it continues to scout several possible locations, but acknowledged that the Denver area is competing with the Chicago and Atlanta areas.
Commission members stumbled over the fact that the nascent company reported just $300,000 in revenues last year, far less than would be needed normally to secure such a big incentive from the state. But it has a significant amount of deep-pocketed investors and has raised $185 million in private-equity funding already, calming any fears about the state’s investment.
The commission adding a caveat that OEDIT leaders must be allowed to see the company’s full financial statements in the near future.
“If they had a limited amount of cash in the bank, we would not bring this to you with the financials the way they are,” said Jeff Kraft, OEDIT director of business planning and incentives.
Commissioners also unanimously approved the offering of as much as $3.04 million in job-growth incentive tax credits for “Project Destiny,” a publicly traded company headquartered in Louisville that offers a global video subscription service and wants to launch an in-house film studio to generate original content.
The company, which now has 122 workers in Colorado, would hire 155 more at an average annual wage of $101,903 and also is looking at Arizona and Florida as possible locations for the studio, Gillis said.