Work delayed at $160M automated Meijer warehouse

Tipp City council to be asked to OK deal after school board’s inaction.

Tipp City Council will be asked to approve a Community Reinvestment Area agreement with Meijer for a $160 million automated warehouse west of Interstate 75 after the local board of education failed to act on a request to waive an associated notification period.

The board’s inaction March 16 means the council will vote on the agreement after the 45-day notification period expires naturally, said City Manager Tim Eggleston. Council next meets April 6.

Tipp City Exempted Village Schools Board of Education members questioned document wording and the sharing in late January of information on Meijer’s plan with a limited number of school officials including President Theresa Dunaway. The administrators and Dunaway were asked to keep the planned project confidential until a March 9 meeting of the State Controlling Board.

The full board of education was told of the proposed project just days before it was asked to waive the 45-day notification.

Dunaway said she didn’t like document wording that the board had been notified in January when only she had.

“We were not allowed to discuss it at all ... It makes me seem like I am not being honest with my board. This board is trying to be completely transparent,” she said.

City Development Director Matt Spring said there was no intention of misleading the board about the project or the waiver. The waiver involved the CRA agreement that includes tax abatement from the city and outlines a sharing of income tax dollars from the new jobs at Meijer once the taxes exceed $1 million in a year.

Public announcement of the project was not planned until after the Controlling Board acted on project incentives earlier this month, Spring said.

Board member Anne Zakkour said the request “just popped out of the blue” the week before the board’s March 16 meeting.

“We must act as a board ...

We didn’t know about this. You put her (Dunaway) in a very compromising position by putting this under an umbrella of confidentiality,” she said. “This is disturbing.” Because the board failed to vote on the agreement March 16, the city council removed the CRA agreement from its agenda the same evening.

Eggleston said he was disappointed, but council will not return to the board for approval. Instead it will vote April 6. The waiver was requested by Meijer to allow contractors to begin project work early. The work now will wait until after council’s vote, Eggleston said.

The CRA with Meijer would give the business 50 percent real property tax abatement for 15 years. A 50 percent abatement does not require board of education approval. The warehouse will serve Meijer stores in Ohio, Southeastern Indiana and Northern Kentucky.

The project will retain 225 jobs that will be transferred from the existing Meijer warehouse along Kessler-Cowlesville

Road and add 65 new jobs within the first five years, a memo said.

Other incentives for the project are in the works with the state.

The Meijer building along Kessler-Cowlesville Road would be vacated with the move of operations to the automated building. The hope is Meijer will use the existing building for another purpose, although nothing has been finalized, Spring said.