Potential Bell expansion plan removed from council agenda

Call it an idea before its time.

The Fort Worth City Council removed an item from its work session Tuesday, an informal report concerning a Texas Enterprise Zone nomination for Bell Textron, Inc.

Turns out the information for the request was not accurate, according to Lindsey Hughes, Bell manager of global communications.

“The information in the enterprise zone nomination document was prepared by a third-party and contained inaccurate information,” Hughes wrote in an email to the Fort Worth Business Press. “The item was pulled from the council working session and we are working to revise the application.”

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Laken Rapier with Mayor Betsy Price’s office echoed those thoughts, saying the item may appear on a council agenda in the future.

The Texas Enterprise Zone Program is an economic development tool for local communities to partner with the state of Texas to promote job creation and capital investment in economically distressed areas of the state. An enterprise project is defined as a business that is nominated by a municipality or county and then approved for state benefits.

Designated projects are eligible to apply for state sales and use tax refunds on qualified expenditures. The level and amount of refund is related to the capital investment and jobs created at the qualified business site.

The report stated that Bell qualifies for a single Enterprise Project Designation with a projected capital investment of $115 million for upgrades, improvements and expansions at the existing site located at 3255 Bell Helicopter Blvd. The report breakdown included approximately $30 million to construct an 85,000 square foot Bell Training

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Academy (BTA) Innovation Center and BTA flight operations landing pads, $8.5 million to relocate the BTA practice airfields used in the company’s onsite training academy, $2.5 million to construct a 10,000 square foot autonomy experimentation integration Laboratory, $16.5 million to purchase a state-of-the-art flight simulator and construct a 10,000 square foot building in which to house it, and $23 million in advanced infrastructure and manufacturing equipment, including rotor machining strategy and building modernization.

The report also said the company plans to spend over $16 million on the

development of an estimated 300,000 square foot factory of the future, and that an additional $18.5 million would be spent over the course of the designation on other projects to modernize Bell’s facilities.

In return for the designation, the report said Bell would commit to hiring 35 percent economically disadvantaged persons or enterprise zone residents for its new certified jobs at its Fort Worth facility during its enterprise project designation, and the company expects to increase its existing level of employment by creating an additional 400 jobs over the next five years, along with retaining up 500 full-time jobs.

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The single project designation allows for a state sales and use tax refund on qualified expenditures of $2,500 per job, for up to 500 jobs, with a maximum benefit of $1.25 million over a five year period. Under the Texas Enterprise Zone Act at least 25 percent of a business’ new or retained employees will be residents of an enterprise zone, economically disadvantaged individuals or veterans. In addition, the jobs will be provided through the end of the designation period or at least three years after the date on which a state benefit is received, whichever is later.