The LaSalle County city of Mendota is working to keep a local manufacturer looking to expand. It could mean a tenant for a long-vacant building and 100 new jobs.
Mendota Mayor Dave Boelk says commercial woodworking company Starved Rock Wood Products has been doing very well the last few years, expanding from 18 to 65 employees. Now it wants to move into the old R.R. Donnelley building, left vacant when that company closed the facility in 2012, taking nearly 200 high-wage jobs with it.
Starved Rock Wood Products says that, with the move, it will add 50 jobs this year and 50 more the next.
Boelk says these are skilled, high-paying jobs that will be a boon for not just the citizens of Mendota, but the whole region.
To facilitate the move, the Mendota City Council authorized creation of a Tax Increment Financing District, or “TIF,” which will rebate some of the increased property taxes the company would have to pay over several years due to the increased valuation of the now occupied and improved property
“TIFs” have sometimes proved controversial, Mendota Mayor Dave Boelk says. Not in this case.
“It’s a perfect example of taking care of what was definitely at the time an empty building, and probably would have been a blighted area that, someday, the taxpayers could have come up to have to pay to tear it down,” he says.
Boelk says in return, Mendota will not only get a liability taken off its hands, but a big boost to the local economy, through the new jobs, and the money those workers will put into the area.
