Business View Magazine | February 2018

110 111 ZFS Ithaca, LLC Grain Marketing: 866.888.1839 Feed Ingredients: 866.888.7082 Transportation: 800.968.4507 Seed Sales: 616.879.1729 1266 E. Washington Rd Ithaca, MI 48847 Proudly growing and serving the community of Ithaca to both parties and, in the end, several economic incentive programs were creatively used to help underwrite the project. The first was getting the state to designate the ZFS property an Agricultural Processing Renaissance Zone, thus reducing the company’s property taxes for the first 15 years and ultimately saving it $14.8 million. Another was to secure a Brownfield Rede- velopment Agreement that will reimburse ZFS for $12.2 million in certain upfront infrastructure costs once the Ren Zone expires. “The Brownfield District will allow the County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority to capture tax- es frommost of the taxing jurisdictions and pay ZFS back for the cost of the infrastructure for which they are fronting the money,”Yonker explains. “So, that way, the city doesn’t have to use our bonding capac- ity and we aren’t out a significant amount of money, waiting to get paid back after the Ren Zone expires in 15 years. ZFS is taking that risk; they’re fronting the money for the infrastructure and then they will get paid back.” However, in Michigan,most types of incentives that Ithaca,ZFS, and the county employed, cannot normally be directed to a private company; they have to be directed to a public body, such as a mu- nicipality. Thus, Ithaca is doing its part by installing some of the required infrastructure improvements, ITHACA, MICHIGAN PHOTO BY DETAILED AERIAL SOLUTIONS / E&S GRAPHICS OF ITHACA, MICHIGAN such as an electric substation and rail line extensions, to the ZFS property and then leasing them back to the company. “We have also installed water and sanitary sewer improvements so that we could provide water for domestic and fire suppression use, and take all of the wastewater that they’re generating,” says Yonker. “ZFS is also bringing in high-voltage elec- tric transmission lines from seven miles away and are paying for that up front. So, in order for them to be eligible for state grant funding for that, the city is going to own the substation and lease it back to them to operate. That’s another public infrastructure improvement, and that’s some of the creative ways we’ve done this.” “It’s quite a project to put all these pieces together in order to do it,”Wheeler adds. “If it hadn’t been for the city, there’s no way this project ever would have oc- curred here.” Yonker states that the newZFS facility will create 100+ con- struction jobs over the two-year construction of the facility.“ZFS intends to create 74 total jobs, between our plant and at their corporate headquarters in Zeeland. Sixty will be local, in and around Ithaca- truck driv- ers, lab technicians,maintenance people, railroad operators -because they are putting in quite a lot of additional rail sidings to service this facility.Overall, ZFS will invest over $130 million on Phase One of