Company revises expansion plans in city
YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown Tool and Die Co. plans to spend $10.1 million and more than double its workforce to relocate from its Poland Avenue location to a vacant building on Salt Springs Road.
The company first proposed in 2018 building a 60,000-square-foot facility behind the former Exterran Energy Solutions Inc. property on Salt Springs Road. But the company has changed plans and has instead opted to move to the closed Exterran structure, which is also about 60,000 square feet.
The company listed its investment in the new facility at $10.1 million on a request for a tax abatement from the city. That includes $8 million on machinery and equipment, $1 million to improve its new location and $1.1 million on furniture, fixtures and inventory.
The company would increase its workforce from 46 full-time workers with a $2 million annual payroll to 100 employees in three years, according to a tax abatement document. The 54 new workers would add $3.2 million to the company’s payroll.
Exterran — which made equipment for the gas and oil industry — opened its $13.2 million facility in April 2013 at 2572 Salt Springs Road and received a 10-year tax abatement from the city. However, struggles with the gas and oil industry led the company to go out of business in March 2016, laying off 68 workers. The building has been vacant ever since.
Youngstown Tool and Die — which makes custom designed aluminum extrusion dies — has been looking to move from its 1261 Poland Ave. location because the company has outgrown it, said T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s economic development director.
Rather than build behind Exterran’s former location, Youngstown Tool and Die chose to move there, she said.
That move should happen shortly, Woodberry said.
Attempts Monday to reach David Mrdjenovic, the company’s general manager, were unsuccessful.
But in the tax abatement document, he wrote: “This tax abatement request is the final step in allowing us to move forward with this expansion in the city of Youngstown. Without this incentive, we will be forced to move the business out of the city and probably out of the state.”
The Poland Avenue location is about 22,000 square feet, according to the Mahoning County auditor’s website.
“We’re accomplishing filling a vacant building and retaining and expanding an existing business,” Woodberry said. “The Poland Avenue building isn’t big enough for them. They were moving no matter what. They could move here in the city or somewhere else.”
It’s a somewhat unusual tax abatement as it would be for the remaining two-plus years left on Exterran’s abatement with five years added to it.
The city school district agreed to add five years to the abatement in exchange for the company’s commitment to establish an internship program for graduates of the district, according to a city council ordinance.
Council will vote Wednesday on authorizing the board of control to move ahead with the 75-percent new real property tax abatement.
With the tax abatement, Youngstown Tool and Die would pay $23,180 annually in property taxes and save $69,540 a year.
The city had awarded a 10-year tax abatement to the company in 2018 when it was going to build, but without the construction that abatement never took effect.
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