The St. Joseph County Council unanimously approved an economic development agreement Tuesday as part of the county’s bid to snag a potential multibillion dollar electric vehicle battery plant. The same agreement was unanimously approved by the county commissioners and redevelopment commission earlier that day.
Ultium Cells is a joint venture between LG Energy Solutions and General Motors that makes battery cells for GM vehicles as part of the company’s goal to go all-electric by 2035.
The company has one plant in Warren, Ohio and is currently building two more facilities — one in Spring Hill, Tenn. and the other in Lansing, Mich. And it is considering a site in New Carlisle at the northwest corner of Larrison Drive and Indiana State Route 2 for its fourth EV battery plant, which would be a $2.4 billion, 2 million square foot facility.
“We are talking about an investment over $2 billion dollars, about 1,600 employees on that site,” South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Jeff Rea said. “We believe this is a fit that checks almost all the boxes that we were looking for in a project.”
The company’s average starting wage would be $23.50 an hour plus benefits available from the first day of employment including health insurance and discounts on GM and LG products.
In addition, Rea said there would also be 2,000 temporary construction jobs and around 1,200 additional jobs that the plant’s economic activity would support if it was built. If it opens, he projected it would have an annual economic impact of at least $652 million a year once operational.
Under the economic development agreement, the county is offering Ultium Cells a 15-year personal property tax abatement, which starts at 100 percent and slides down to 70 percent over five years, as well as a 10-year, 80 percent real property tax abatement.
That personal property tax abatement only covers what’s in the original project agreement — such as equipment for production lines — and is structured so the 15-year countdown will start separately for each line as it’s installed.
It will also pay to extend utilities to the site and build needed infrastructure upgrades, such as road improvements.
Those could include adding additional turn and acceleration lanes at State Route 2 and Larrison Drive to accommodate commuter and truck traffic and widening Larrison Drive between State Route 2 and Edison Rd.
In response to earlier community concerns over the project’s potential impact on the Kankakee aquifer, the development agreement requires Ultium Cells to install four groundwater monitoring wells with water quality and depth testing conducted several times a year.
Because the plant will use New Carlisle city water and South Bend city sewer, it — in combination with the Honeysuckle solar facility nearby — will actually decrease annual withdrawals from the aquifer by around 7 percent, or around 1.2 million gallons per day.
Currently, the aquifer is used at around 50 percent of safe capacity, mostly for agriculture and industrial uses.
The company will also provide quarterly fire response training to the New Carlisle Olive Township Fire Territory, the Warren Township Fire, Department, the Clay Fire Territory and the South Bend Fire Department on how to handle potential incidents at the facility.
Former commissioner Andy Kostielney called it a “great win for everyone.”
“This is exactly the type of project we need here and we’ve been working to land here in St. Joseph County,” Kostielney said. “It improves our focus in the renewable energy space, and I think this is just a boon — not just from a construction standpoint, a permanent jobs standpoint, this truly is a generational project.”
However, several members of the public said the plant is not what locals want. That includes New Carlisle resident Mary Countryman.
“It may be the envision of Jeff Rea or Andy Kostielney — they don’t live here,” Countryman said. “This is not what we envision for our community. We don’t envision a massive building, a lot of traffic and congestion, more accidents.”
“We moved here for the country living, to see the cornfields — not massive industry,” Countryman added.
In addition, several other members of the public said they appreciated the groundwater monitoring requirement but asked that more be done to protect the aquifer such as exploring ways to prevent any potential runoff and that the company consider adding rooftop solar panels.
State officials said Tuesday that the Indiana Economic Development Corporation has secured approval for the incentives it plans to offer for the plant but could not yet share details.
Ultium Cells representatives said Tuesday they plan to make a final decision on the plant’s location by the end of the year. If the project goes forward, construction is expected to start in early 2023 for a targeted completion date of 2027.
Contact Jakob at jlazzaro@wvpe.org or follow him on Twitter at @JakobLazzaro.
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