Rockland
EDC touts an Empire Zone all its own
Officials look to get word out
on incentives
By ALEXANDER SOULE
In touting newly secured Empire Zone incentives
to expanding companies, Rockland County officials
undoubtedly will showcase other sophisticated businesses
with local operations, including Chromalloy New
York, a turbine manufacturer owned by New York City-based
Sequa Corp. that employs more than 400 people in
the village of Orangeburg.
Yet Chromalloy itself has chosen to hopscotch
Rockland County and build out a high-tech coatings
business in the town of Wallkill in Orange County
to the north, which received its own Empire Zone
designation eight years ago.
Long squeezed between that zone to the
north and the economic muscle of Westchester and
Bergen (N.J.) counties to east and south, Rockland
County now has an Empire Zone all its own, and cites
early returns in the planned relocation of Euromed
Inc. from Northvale, N.J., to Orangetown.
Chromalloy’s $60 million expansion in Wallkill,
via a joint venture with East Hartford, Conn., jet
engine maker Pratt & Whitney, provides early
evidence that Rockland County’s new Empire Zone
may not be an instant panacea to the issues it faces
in attracting notice from corporate site selection
personnel.
Holly Freedman, president and chief executive
officer of the Rockland Economic Development Corp.,
said she is confident that Empire Zone incentives
will generate significant economic activity as her
organization gets the word out.
An Empire Zone gives county development
officials several tools to attract businesses, including:
+ A tax credit of up to
$1,500 for each employee hired in the zone, with
bonuses for higher-income positions;
+
A tax credit of 10 percent of investments
in industrial equipment;
+
Sales-tax exemptions and refunds on construction
materials and business items and services;
+
A credit for property taxes that factors
in job creation, compensation or investments; and
+
A credit against income taxes generated
in the Empire Zone.
While Empire Zones are limited in their
geographic scope, the program’s rules allow local
planners to slap the “regionally significant” label
on some projects and site them outside of an existing
Empire Zone within a county.
Both the Euromed and Chromalloy expansions
were deemed regionally significant by local planners.
In Chromalloy’s case, that was so because a Maine
community reportedly was lobbying to attract the
joint venture, which is called Advanced Coating
Technologies.
Euromed signaled its initial plans to relocate
in 2005, well before Rockland County officials announced
they had received the Empire Zone designation effective
July 30, 2006. The company plans to bring 90 workers
initially but could add as many as 110 more in time.
That would number Euromed among the 40
largest commercial employers in Rockland County.
In Orangetown, Verizon Wireless is the largest commercial
employer with 800 employees at last count.
Euromed might have been able to tap incentives
to remain in New Jersey. After hoisting its Business
Employment Incentive Program (BEIP) onto the budgetary
chopping block a few years ago, New Jersey chose
instead to continue the program.
The New Jersey Economic Development Authority
executed a dozen BEIP grants last year that induced
business relocations in Bergen and Passaic counties,
and three more that led to expansions. The projects
are expected to add 1,600 jobs, 700 of them within
a stone’s throw of the Rockland County border.
It is unclear how many of those projects
represented an opportunity for Rockland County.
Benjamin Moore & Co. sought BEIP assistance
to relocate into a bigger headquarters building
in Montvale, N.J., and spokeswoman Eileen McComb
said the paint company did not consider Empire Zone
benefits for its expansion.
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