BERLIN: The City Council on Tuesday night approved providing land and a partial property tax exemption for a German company to relocate and expand in the Cedar Falls Industrial Park.
The council approved a development agreement with a property subsidiary of D. La Porte North America, which has been been located in the Industrial Park since 2009, to build a $1.2 million, 11,200 square foot industrial warehouse and office facility on about 1.5 acres at the southeast corner of Technology Parkway and Development Drive in an industrial park addition along West Viking Road.
The building will be owned by D. La Porte Properties and leased to D. La Porte North America, which will relocate from its existing leased space at 6122 Nordic Drive in the Industrial Park.
The company “manufactures handles, latches and related components for the construction and agricultural equipment markets in North America,” interim Cedar Falls community services manager Bob Seymour wrote in a staff report to Mayor Jim Brown and council members.
Customers include Deere, Case New Holland, AGCO, Bobcat, Volvo, Caterpillar and more than 60 other customers throughout the U.S., Seymour wrote.
The firm, headquartered in Wuppertal, Germany, started making construction and agriculture products 60 years ago and “is now the major producer of these products for North America and Western Europe,” Seymour wrote. “The company has now outgrown (its) rented space at 6122 Nordic Drive and needs to have a larger building that provides room for expansion in the future,” Seymour wrote.
The city would provide the land to D. La Porte at no cost, “consistent with our general industrial economic incentive guidelines,” Seymour wrote. The building would have a minimum valuation of $1.2 million. The city would provide a five-year partial property tax abatement, with 75 percent of the property valuation exempt from taxation the first year, declining in increments of 15 percent each year until the full valuation comes on the tax rolls. Over the five years, the company would have $85,000 in taxes abated due to the exemption, pay $104,500, and pay about $38,000 in property tax a year once the property’s full valuation comes on the tax rolls.
