Potential Birds-Eye Buyer Wants Fee and Tax Breaks in Exchange for 180 Jobs

An aerial view of the Birds-Eye plant.
An aerial view of the Birds-Eye plant.

Fulton city lawmakers will soon be asked to provide significant taxpayer-funded breaks to lure a company into the closed Birds-Eye food processing plant, according to Fulton’s Mayor.

Ron Woodward said this week that a company is deep into negotiations to buy the Phillips St. plant and bring back a food processing operation.

He said the company, which he would identify only as a firm called Phillips Street, LLC, is promising to restore 180 jobs in the first three years of operation.  In return, he said the city is being asked to provide three years of concessions on water and sewer rates and property taxes.

Woodward said the company would buy the entire plant.  Previously, the county’s economic development agency had been working with a company that wanted the cold storage portion of the plant and would look to find a tenant who wanted to use the food processing portion.

He said that the buyer would not use the entire cold storage capacity of the plant and would look for a tenant to use the rest.

The Mayor did not say when Council members would be asked to approve the package of incentives, but felt that it would be soon.

Print this entry

3 Comments

  1. Can all of the concessions be tied to guaranteed number of or percentage of jobs, i.e. if only 100 folks are hired, 100/180 per cent of concessions are made?
    We have had too many promises broken in previous PILOT programs where the concessions have been received but the promises have not been met. Oops, sorry!

  2. I think it’s great the city is trying to bring business back to our city, but at the expense of the citizens. We don’t get tax breaks, basically we are being blackmailed for jobs. They want us to pay for the water they are using to make profit. How many gallons a day will they need, I would dare say quite a bit and this is water that someones going to have to pay for the processing and it isn’t cheap from what I am told. Why should it be the citizens. Will it be a union shop as before or a minimum wage slum lord?

  3. Sounds like Woodard is negotiating with another African chocolate company. We already have the higest property taxes in central New York. If he wants to give anyone a tax break, it ought to be the citizens of Fulton. Maybe he could reduce the size of our police and fire depts. Naw, why would he do that? They’re the ones that re-elect him everytime. Instead, he’s considering increasing our taxes.

    I hope Hillary and Schummer don’t rush up here to get their pictures taken again. That worked out real well the last time.

Comments are closed.