Esther wants to expand her distillery by adding a 5,000 sq ft warehouse to store bourbon barrels.
Ether researches the Lee-Ogle Enterprise Zone and finds a suitable site for his facility. An existing downtown building is located in one of its cities or villages and is well served by municipal and regional utilities.
She contacts the zone administrator and verifies the site is in the Lee-Ogle Enterprise Zone. The city confirms that it is in its Downtown TIF Redevelopment Area, which means that this downtown has a recently improved streetscape, expanded public parking, and improved public utilities funded by the improving real estate valuation in the TIF. These improved downtown features make it a great place to invest. Esther finds that the zone incentives have the potential to help him get his dreamed-of expansion moving forward years ahead of schedule.
The real estate improvements necessary to expand this facility total $2 million dollars. Additional non-real estate machining manufacturing equipment and technology, etc. total $200,000. Estimated use of natural gas per year is $5,000.
A one-time fee of ½ of 1% of the estimated building materials cost (a typical project is about 50% labor and 50% building materials) is paid to the enterprise zone, which would be $1,000,000 times .5% or $5,000.
Savings accruing from a Lee-Ogle Enterprise Zone project are as follows:
In summary, the Esther Distillery Expansion Project, when undertaken in the Lee-Ogle Enterprise Zone after applying and paying a $5,000 fee to the enterprise zone, would benefit from $80,000 in savings from the Building Materials Sales Tax Exemption, $11,000 in Illinois income tax credits, and an on-going $250 per year savings on natural gas purchases.
Due to its location in a Downtown TIF, property tax abatement is not allowed, but municipal officials should be contacted to see if portions of the project also meet the public needs of the TIF and have funding opportunities.