The City of Greenville is in the process of applying for an enterprise zone that will cover an area that runs along Rt. 40. A public hearing on the matter will be held Thursday, December 11 at the Greenville Econo Lodge. City Manager Dave Willey told us about the purpose of that hearing, and more about the enterprise zone application process.
“The public hearing is to give out information regarding the enterprise zone application, which will be filed by the end of the year,” Willey told us. “Once that application is filed, we will find out by next September if our enterprise zone is going to be approved. That would go for another 15 years.
“This is a competitive application. There will be, I think, 48 enterprise zones that are awarded in this round. I don’t know how many applications they will receive.”
We also asked Willey about the importance of the enterprise zone to the City of Greenville.
“An enterprise zone is one of the tools in our economic development toolbox,” Willey said. “The advantage that it has is that it provides some incentives. It provides a sales tax exemption for the building materials a company uses if they locate and build in Greenville. It also provides some equipment tax credits for the purchase of equipment if it’s located in an enterprise zone. It also has some tax abatement potential, although anytime a TIF district and an enterprise zone overlap, the TIF district is what actually handles the tax abatement if there is any.”
The public hearing on the enterprise zone will be held at 6:00 p.m. Thursday, December 11 at the Econo Lodge on Rt. 127. The public is welcome to attend the meeting.
