City Wide Facility Solutions, a Fort Mitchell-based commercial facility service provider, will relocate its headquarters to local landmark Covington Station on Pike Street next year.
“I love the history behind the building,” CEO and President Brent Degenhardt told LINK nky. “Our intent is to maintain that history.”
City Wide provides various facility management services to businesses in the region, including janitorial, maintenance, painting and pest control among other facility services.
Degenhardt declined to share the identities of specific clients, but he said the company contracts with institutions in the automotive, healthcare, logistics and light manufacturing sectors. They also work with various corporate offices throughout the Northern Kentucky and Greater Cincinnati region. Their current offices are in Fort Mitchell, but they also have offices in Lexington and Dayton, Ohio.
Degenhardt said he was familiar with the building before learning it had gone on the market earlier this year. He added that the location in Covington would be more conducive to recruiting than their current headquarters in Fort Mitchell.
“That was the biggest attraction,” Degenhardt said. “… I want to fill every seat in that building.”
The new office will hold the company’s full-time management, administrative and direct sales staff. If all goes according to plan, Degenhardt said, the company should move into the building in the first quarter of next year and begin hiring in the second quarter.
Degenhardt also gave a shout-out to the City of Covington, from which City Wide Solutions will probably receive a jobs development incentive.
Covington’s Economic Development Director, Tom West, gave a presentation on City Wide’s jobs development incentive at the city commission on Tuesday, where he outlined the nature of the small business incentive and what the city hoped to accomplish with it.
“They’ll [City Wide Facility Solutions] be bringing 30 new jobs to Covington and adding 13 over the next three years,” West told the city commission. “The average annual salary is $56,000.”
The commission added the jobs incentive package to next week’s consent agenda, meaning it will likely pass.
Covington’s job development incentives work this way: The city grants a reduced payroll tax rate over a period of time to a company who wants to relocate to Covington. In order to qualify the company must then provide a minimum number of jobs during that time period with a minimum amount of payroll. The company must remit a tax payment at the normal rate, but can then request reimbursement from the city at the reduced rate so long as it meets the incentive’s requirements.
In City Wide’s case, the incentive requires the company bring in at least 31 new jobs during the first year past the incentive’s activation date of Jan. 1, 2025 and generate about $1.8 million in new payroll. If these conditions are met, the company is then eligible for a reduced payroll tax rate of 1%, which it can maintain for the first five years of the incentive period.
The city estimates the company should generate about $420,000 in new payroll taxes over the 10-year incentive period.
“The City of Covington has been great to work with,” Degenhardt said.
The city also presented on a jobs development incentive for Kenton County Public Schools, which plans to open a new administrative office on Madison Pike, adding 75 new jobs to the city. The district did not respond to inquiries for comment, but the commission also added the incentive to next week’s consent agenda.
Covington Station itself was built in the 1920s and served as the city’s primary train depot until its closure in the 1960s. It sat vacant, slowly falling in disrepair, until 1989 when Keystone, Inc. bought it and converted it to office space.
The building’s most recent tenants’, architectural firm Hub + Weber and Wurz Financial Services, leases ended in August. Real estate company Comey & Shepard listed the building for sale in June at a price of $1.35 million. City Wide finalized the purchase of the building on Dec. 4, and city documents indicate the company’s investment into the building as being slightly above the list price at $1.375 million.
“We’re excited about filling [the building] with extensions of our team,” Degenhardt concluded.
UPDATE: The original version of this article misstated that City Wide had offices in West Chester, Ohio. City Wide services the West Chester area but does not have an office there. The article also contained errors related to City Wide Facility Solutions’ company name. Relevant lines for both of these points have been updated, and we apologize for any confusion this may have caused.–LINK nky editorial, Dec. 18, 2023.