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August 14, 2009
The County Commission on Thursday approved selling 16 acres in the Santa Rosa County Industrial Park to WTEC, a New Jersey-based company that supplies cable to wind farms.
The sale will enlarge WTEC's distribution center, which currently employs about 25 people, and build a rail connection to the nearby CSX rail, said Shannon Ogletree, industry recruiter for the TEAM Santa Rosa Economic Development Council.
"In the next few weeks, the company will start clearing the land," Ogletree said. "Hopefully, by the end of the year, they will start construction. By the end of 2010, they will start hiring people."
The expansion will do business as Gulf Cable. In the works for about a year, the project had been referred to only as "Project Kinetic" until now.
The commission voted to sell the 16 acres in the industrial park to the company for $56,000, a 90 percent reduction from full value, based on a standard formula that considers the number and quality of jobs a project promises to create.
The company has committed to construct a 150,000-square-foot facility and employ at least 100 people within five years at an average of 150 percent of the average wage in Santa Rosa, Ogletree said. The current average wage in Santa Rosa is $14.75 per hour.
The East Milton site was chosen by the company, despite heavy interest from Iowa and Nebraska, areas where wind farms are used to generate electricity.
"Obviously, that's a big deal, when most of the wind farms are in the Midwest," said County Commissioner Gordon Goodin, chairman of the commission's economic development committee. "It's because we actually have the product that they needed, the rail access and distribution access. With an emerging technology like wind or solar, I think birds of a feather tend to flock together, and I think Santa Rosa County will see more of that kind of activity."
Because of the nature of WTEC's business, it met the benchmarks to be a Qualified Target Industry, giving it an expected $500,000 in state corporate income tax refunds over the next six years, Ogletree said. The project also received a state Economic Development Transportation Fund grant worth about $700,000 to build the rail spur.
That spur will give access to rail to about 40 acres of vacant property in the industrial park.
The WTEC announcement is the latest in a string of good economic news for Santa Rosa. In the last few weeks:
-- AppRiver announced plans to build a new headquarters and expand its 108-employee Gulf Breeze operation by 80 positions.
-- H.T. Hackney Co. broke ground on a new distribution center in East Milton that will employ 50.
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