Bob Patti, president NHanced Semiconductors (May 14, 2024)
Monroe County councilors from left: Marty Hawk, Cheryl Munson, Trent Deckard, Jennifer Crossley, and Peter Iversen. Attending on a remote video conferencing platform was Geoff McKim. Kate Wiltz did not attend. (May 14, 2024)
The planned expansion by NHanced Semiconductors just west of Bloomington’s city limits, has been discontinued.
The expansion could have meant 250 new jobs, many of which would have paid around $100,000 a year.
The public announcement from the semiconductor firm came at the Monroe County council’s regular Tuesday meeting, from NHanced president Bob Patti.
In December last year, the county council unanimously granted a significant tax abatement for the NHanced expansion.
As reasons for the decision to end the company’s effort to expand on Bloomington’s outskirts, Patti cited some federal funding that did not pan out, as well as decreased prospects for private investment.
A tax abatement worth a total of around $10.4 million, which was granted by Monroe County’s council on Tuesday night, has cleared the way for Simtra BioPharma Solutions (formerly Baxter Pharmaceutical) to build a 140,000-square-foot manufacturing facility at its Curry Pike facility just outside Bloomington’s western city limits.
According to Simtra, the investment means a $145 million investment in capital equipment, and another $80,000 in real property investment. The company says that the expansion will create 130 new jobs with an average salary plus benefits worth $73,379 a year.
Simtra’s paperwork indicates 1,039 current employees, so adding 130 would bring the total to around 1,169.
NHanced Semiconductors says it wants to make a $152-million investment in the now mostly vacant Cook Medical property at 301 N. Curry Pike west of Bloomington, so that it can establish a microelectronics manufacturing and packaging facility there.
By 2029, NHanced says that the company’s planned investments will be mostly completed. The company’s anticipated growth would mean 250 new jobs, paying an average of better than $100,000 a year, according to NHanced.
All that depends on a requested tax abatement from the Monroe County government.
For each of the next 10 years, NHanced is asking for 100-percent abatement of the taxes associated with the personal property investments at its planned facility. NHanced is not asking for any abatement of the taxes on the real property improvements that it makes.
Personal property refers to movable assets like equipment, while real property means immovable assets, like land and buildings.
Winning easy approval from all three Monroe County commissioners on Wednesday morning was the approval of a statement of benefits in support of the tax abatement for NHanced Semiconductors.
Looking east at Urban Station on South Walnut Street (June 23, 2023)
The owners of Urban Station—the apartment building on South Walnut that is also home to the Chocolate Moose—missed a May 15 paperwork deadline.
The paperwork has to be filed every year, in order to be in compliance with the terms of the tax abatement that was granted by the city council in 2016.
Without a waiver from Bloomington’s city council for the missed deadline, the owners cannot claim the abatement as a deduction on their 2023 taxes.
From upper left counter clockwise: ESD staff Andrea “De” de la Rosa and Alex Crowley; EDC members Malcolm Webb, Kurt Zorn, Vanessa McClary, Geoff McKim, Matt Flaherty; and assistant city attorney Larry Allen.
On Friday, Bloomington’s five-member economic development commission (EDC) approved a report from city staff on about a dozen tax abatements that have been granted to companies over the years, as well as a couple of tax abatements that have been approved, but not yet claimed.
Screenshot of the message that popped up for the Zoom access to Bloomington’s economic development commission meeting for May 30, 2023.
Gathered for the BEDC meeting on May 30, 2023 were, clockwise from the bottom corner of the table: Alex Crowley, Larry Allen, Andrea de la Rosa (city staff); and BEDC members Matt Flaherty, Vanessa McClary, and Kurt Zorn.
On Tuesday, Bloomington’s five-member economic development commission (BEDC) tried to meet for the first time since October of last year.
All the pieces for a meeting appeared to be in place. Three of the five BEDC members were physically present in the McCloskey Room at city hall.
The majority attendance meant the group had the required minimum number to meet—a quorum. That number also satisfied Indiana’s Open Door Law which has a 50-percent in-person requirement for electronic meetings—in case any BEDC members had wished to attend by using the Zoom video conferencing platform.
But the Zoom link that had been provided in the official public notice of the meeting did not work. When an attempt was made to launch the Zoom interface for the meeting, an error message was delivered, which read: “This meeting ID is not valid.”
In a Wednesday morning email sent site-wide on behalf of Andrew Espejo, who is general manager of Catalent’s manufacturing facility in Bloomington, the pharmaceutical manufacturing company has announced a reduction of its Bloomington workforce by 400 jobs.
The email indicates that employees—which include full-time and temporary employees, mostly within the operations team—will be notified between Wednesday and Friday to “discuss the next steps, review available support, and address any questions the impacted employees may have.”
Wednesday’s email message states: “Those who are not contacted by Human Resources should report to work as scheduled.”
The message also says, “[W]e’re committed to operating in a transparent manner to ensure every employee impacted by these changes has the information and support they need, severance pay, benefits continuation, and outplacement assistance.”
Getting a final approval on Tuesday was a deal between Bloomington and Paris-based Meridiam, to build a fiber-to-the-home open-access network offering symmetric 1-Gigabit service to at least 85 percent of the city.
Provisional Meridiam network. Blue: arial network | Red: underground. (City of Bloomington Digital Underground: Purple) The image links to a dynamic version of the map.
Under the master development agreement, which has now been signed, Meridiam would also offer symmetric 250-Megabit service to low-income residents at zero net cost.
Green-lighted on Tuesday by Bloomington’s redevelopment commission (RDC) was an expenditure agreement that reimburses to Meridiam, over a 20-year period, 95 percent of the roughly $10.9 million in personal property taxes on conduit and fiber, which Meridiam will pay during that time. The legal tool that is to be used is a tax increment finance (TIF) area.
Also approved on Tuesday, by Bloomington’s board of public works, was a master easement agreement that is supposed to make more expedient Meridiam’s access to Bloomington’s public right-of-way for conduit installation. Hoosier Networks is a company Meridiam has formed to do business in Indiana, so that’s the entity named in the agreement.
The board of public works also approved the use by Hoosier Networks of the roughly 17 miles of unused conduit, known as the Bloomington Digital Underground, in connection with building and operating its network.
In addition to the tax reimbursement, the RDC confirmed at its Tuesday meeting the declaratory resolution that it had first approved in early June. The resolution declares an economic development area, designating it as a TIF (tax increment finance) area, approves an economic development plan, and finds that the public health and welfare will be benefited by the plan.
Bloomington mayor John Hamilton (right) addresses the Bloomington city council on June 15, 2022.
At its Wednesday meeting, Bloomington’s city council took a couple of steps, on 8–1 votes, as a part of a potential deal to get high-speed internet connections built for most of the city.
The pending agreement would be inked between Paris-based Meridiam and Bloomington.
Under the arrangement, Meridiam would construct a fiber-to-the-home open-access network offering symmetric 1-Gigabit service. Meridiam would offer symmetric 250-Megabit service to low-income residents at zero net cost.
The arrangement would add another competitor to Bloomington’s market by giving an as-yet-unnamed internet service provider (ISP) exclusive access to the new network for at least five years. The initial ISP would also have exclusive access to the roughly 17 miles of conduit and fiber—the Bloomington Digital Underground—which has already been constructed by the city.
The agreement has been analyzed by the Indiana Cable & Broadband Association as “unfairly favoring one provider over others,” which ICBA says conflicts with the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996. ICBA’s legal objections got no mention during deliberations by Bloomington public officials this week.
On Tuesday, Bloomington’s economic development commission (EDC) helped a potential deal between Paris-based Meridiam and the city of Bloomington take another step forward.
Under the arrangement, Meridiam would construct a fiber-to-the-home open-access network offering symmetric 1-Gigabit service. Meridiam would offer symmetric 250-Megabit service to low-income residents at zero net cost.
On a 4–0 vote, the EDC approved a resolution that among other things green-lighted an expenditure agreement that reimburses to Meridiam 95 percent of the roughly $10.9 million in personal property taxes that Meridiam will pay over a 20-year period.
The personal property taxes would be paid on the company’s conduit and fiber. The mechanism the city is using to reimburse Meridiam’s taxes is a tax increment finance (TIF) allocation area, not a tax abatement, even if the effect is basically the same.
The TIF area is exactly the physical space where the conduit and fiber is installed, which has an appearance that some have characterized as web-like. That’s what gives rise to the moniker “spider TIF.”
For Tuesday’s decision, the five-member EDC was missing Matt Flaherty. He is the city council’s representative on the EDC. But Flaherty will have a say when the city council considers two related questions on Wednesday.
