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June 10, 2008

Business Park boosts city’s value

Billion dollar boon

By Rod Rose/The Lebanon Reporter

Lebanon — Lebanon Business Park has helped push the city’s total assessed property valuation over $1 billion since the park opened 14 years ago.

Other economic edges the Duke Realty park has given Lebanon were outlined in a study given to the Lebanon City Council Monday.

The report was prepared for the Boone County Economic Development Corp. by accountants Katz, Sapper & Miller, Indianapolis.

Kristie McKillip, executive director of the EDC, said the business park “has had a huge economic impact on the city of Lebanon,” but the EDC wanted an independent assessment of the development on the city.

Monday, Tim Cook of KS&M; used a PowerPoint presentation to give the council “a very high-level overview of topics we covered.”

The report, 3/8ths of an inch thick, is crammed with charts, graphs, tables and text outlining what the park has meant for jobs, schools and local government tax revenue since it opened in 1994.

In 2007, LBP firms paid $1.75 million in taxes, Cook said. If the 1,000-acre business park had remained farm land, it would have generated $200,000 in taxes.

If the land had become a subdivision, the KS&M; study estimates it would have produced about $11.9 million in tax revenue.

“There has been a steady increase in assessed value and a steady increase in tax rates” locally since LBP opened, Cook said.

Between 2002 and 2006, the total assessed value of property in Lebanon grew from $650 million to $1.035 billion, Cook said. More than half of that increase was in commercial and industrial development.

While most of the business park companies have been given tax abatement, because Indiana phases that payment over 10 years, companies “actually pay more in tax than they have abated” over that decade, Cook said.

Including only full-time jobs, LBP firms have 2,620 employees, with 400 of those being added in the last five years.

Electric rates have fallen for consumers, as the park’s tenants pay nearly 22 percent of Lebanon Utilities’ power revenue.

The Indianapolis Business Journal ranks Lebanon Business Park as one of the 10 largest in Indiana, Cook said, but that story “undercounted square footage.”

The business park is more like the fourth largest in central Indiana, KS&M; said.

In comparisons with Brownsburg, Frankfort, Franklin, Greenfield and Mooresville, Lebanon ranks first in commercial and industrial assessed value, Cook said. Lebanon also had the most significant percent increase in exempt property among those cities.

Business park firms contributed 36 percent of the county’s total United Way of Central Indiana fund-raising goal last year; three of the top five leading business donors to United Way are in the park, Cook said.

Copies of the report are available for review at the clerk/treasurer’s office, on the first floor of the Lebanon Municipal Building, 401 S. Meridian St.

Stories analyzing the Katz, Sapper & Miller report will appear in future issues of The Lebanon Reporter.

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