A local logistics company won approval for incentives to move its operations to Crestview Hills.
Crestview Hills city council last week held a special meeting and unanimously approved (4-0) the incentive package for Ft. Mitchell-based Whitehorse Freight, which plans to move to 2670 Chancellor Drive in the Thomas More Office Park.
“We’re excited to move there,” Whitehorse Freight President Mike Bilokonsky said. “We can’t wait to get moved in, and we’re really excited about all of the office space that we’re going to have.”
Cities can provide incentives through credits or rebates to companies like Whitehorse Freight if they relocate and begin an economic development project.
“We’re hopeful and looking forward to Whitehorse Freight locating within the city,” Crestview Hills City Administrator Alex Mattingly said.
Whitehorse Freight has outgrown its current offices, and is looking to hire more employees, according to the Cincinnati Business Courier. Whitehorse Freight started in 2015 and has grown to employ approximately 65 people today.
Bilokonsky told LINK nky the tax incentives Crestview Hills approved will help the company make hires.
“We can go after the people in Kentucky to try and come work for us,” Bilokonsky said. “With an incentive like that, it makes it that much more enticing to continue to hire, hire, hire.”
Northern Kentucky Tri-Ed helped facilitate the conversations and negotiations between the city, county and state on putting together an incentive package that could best assist Whitehorse Freight.
The first incentive is a Kentucky Business Investment, or KBI.
KBIs are intended to offset a company’s startup or lease costs over a 10-year period. The incentives are performance-based, and benchmarks are set throughout the 10-year period. Benchmarks involve job creation, average wages and capital investment.
In order to reach those benchmarks, the company commits to paying a certain average wage, and then estimates what their capital investment cost would be to get the facility ready for operations.
The second incentive is a gross receipts tax credit related to an economic development project.
A gross receipts tax is applied to a company’s gross sales for business-to-business transactions and final customer purchases, without a deduction for the company’s bus expenses, according to taxfoundation.org.
Crestview Hills imposes a tax of .075 percent on gross receipts collected by each business or entity operating within the city.
Bilokonsky said Greg Harris of ARC Development was instrumental in helping Whitehorse Freight receive the tax incentives from Crestview Hills.
“Greg Harris helped us a lot, and was the main guy in helping us talk incentives with Crestview Hills,” Bilokonsky said.
