Owners of east-side industrial park seeking $8.8M tax break on $125M expansion

Thunderbird Commerce Park (Image courtesy of Google)

The owners of an east-side Indianapolis industrial park are asking for a city tax break on roughly 1 million square feet of new buildings they plan to construct.

Thunderbird CC Land Partners LLC, which consists of Carmel-based Lauth Group Inc. and Dallas firm Covington Group Inc.. expects to invest up to $125 million for the new structures within its 150-acre Thunderbird Commerce Park at the former Ford Visteon Plant east of the Irvington neighborhood.

Lauth is the developer of the project at 6900 English Ave. The site is already home to alcohol distributor Monarch Beverage and its parent company, Reyes Beverage Group, and another undisclosed user.

Filings with the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development show Thunderbird CC plans to add another 1 million square feet of speculative industrial space, including a roughly 258,000-square-foot warehouse on a 20-acre site. The new spec space would take up the remainder of the park’s undeveloped land.

Thunderbird CC spent just under $10 million to acquire the former manufacturing site at 6900 English Ave. in September 2022. At the time, the partnership announced it planned  to invest $175 million to turn it into Thunderbird Commerce Park. So far, about $95 million has been invested in the park.

“We’re really excited about where we are and where it’s going,” Adam Broderick, CEO of Lauth, told IBJ late Monday. “It really comes down to being competitive with the surrounding counties that users might consider. They’re all offering tax abatements.”

Thunderbird CC is seeking a 50% real property tax abatement on the 1 million square feet of spec space that would run at least eight years. However, the abatement could be extended to 10 years if at least 51% of the gross square footage is leased by users operating in an “Opportunity Industry,” although that term was undefined in the city filings.

According to filings, the project’s estimated increase to the tax base would be $77 million in assessed value.

Over the eight-year abatement, Thunderbird CC would save about $8.82 million, or 50.3% of the anticipated property tax, while paying about $8.71 million in tax. That would be in addition to the current annual taxes of $860,000 tied to the property’s current assessed value.

If the requirements are met for the extended abatement, Thunderbird CC could save up to an additional $2.2 million over the extra two years. It would still be required to pay $2.13 million in property taxes on the improvements during that period.

The new development is expected to create at least 100 to 200 jobs at no less than $18 per hour. Lauth has agreed to allocate 5% of its tax savings to city initiatives for community development and economic revitalization.

The city’s nine-member Metropolitan Development Commission will consider a vote on the abatement request during its 1 p.m. meeting Wednesday.

Before Thunderbird CC Land Partners LLC bought the Visteon site, it sat unused for more than a decade as Ford sought a buyer. The automaker closed the 1.8-million-square-foot hydraulic steering factory there in 2011 in its move toward electronically powered steering columns.

Initially, Ford hoped a new user could take over the existing building, but it agreed to raze the structure after failing to secure interest in the site. The factory at one time employed more than 2,000 people on the east side, but that number dipped to 900 by 2010.