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 Ivoclar gets tax breaks in Audubon expansion

By David Robinson

NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER

Published: September 17, 2011

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Ivoclar Vivadent was awarded more than $900,000 in tax breaks by the Amherst Industrial Development Agency on Friday for its plan to expand its dental products plant in the Audubon Industrial Park.

The $4.2 million expansion is expected to create 33 new jobs at the Pineview Drive factory, which currently has 200 full-time and 100 part-time employees.

Ivoclar executives said the company’s current factory and warehouse are running at full capacity, while additional manufacturing space that it leases is in disrepair and can’t be expanded. They also said additional space is needed to accommodate what they expect to be growth in the dental products market that could average 5 percent to 10 percent a year over the next five years.

Ivoclar executives said their preference was to expand in Amherst, but they also considered moving the local manufacturing operation to a sister plant in Somerset, N. J.

The officials said they needed the tax breaks because of the cost differences between the New York and New Jersey operations. The company also is seeking aid from Empire State Development.

“This is a tremendous project,” said James J. Allen, the IDA’s executive director.

Even with the tax breaks, the Ivoclar project is expected to generate an additional $316,300 in local, school and county tax revenues over the 10-year period covered by the abatement.

The IDA also approved $1.5 million in tax breaks for a $9.7 million project by Affordable Senior Housing Opportunities to build a 120-unit senior citizens apartment complex on Sweet Home Road.

The four-story, wood-framed apartment building at 1880-1900 Sweet Home Road would include a mix of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units, with monthly rents in the $835 to $935 range.

The developer said the project would not go forward without tax breaks from the IDA.

Allen said senior housing projects qualify for IDA incentives, under state law. With more than 20,000 Amherst residents age 65 and up, Allen said the town’s senior citizen population is growing and should be able to support additional senior housing.

The Amherst IDA and the Erie County IDA are working with the University at Buffalo Regional Institute on a study looking at the need for senior housing in the Buffalo Niagara region.

“All of the IDAs are concerned with the market for this. With the population aging, should we still be doing this?” Allen said. “We think this is still a viable market. We just want to make sure we don’t satu-

rate the market.”

The IDA also approved a settlement with HSBC Bank USA that terminates the agency’s fee agreement on the bank’s data center on Park Club Lane.

Under the terms of the settlement, HSBC will pay the IDA $412,500, which is 25 percent of the $1.65 million in fees that the bank would owe the IDA over the next 11 years under the fee agreement that was part of the 15-year sales tax break that it received in 2007. The fee agreement required HSBC to pay the IDA $150,000 a year, regardless of whether the bank was operating the data center or not.

The fee agreement needed to be terminated to clear the way for M&T Bank to purchase the data center, Allen said.