Heartland planning to add 32 jobs, $4.6 million in new equipment

Almost exactly one year to the day of its last tax-abated expansion, Heartland Automotive has a new project coming on line and a new tax-abatement request before the Greencastle City Council.

Thursday night the Council adopted Resolution 2018-15, declaring the property Heartland has called home since 1987 at 300 S. Warren Drive an economic revitalization area, which makes the site eligible for tax abatement.

“This is another whole new project for Heartland,” Greencastle/Putnam County Development Center Director Kristin Clary told the Council during its monthly session at City Hall.

The latest venture will seek 10-year abatement on new equipment valued at $4,576,337. That comes on the heels of an investment of $5.9 million in new equipment in mid-September 2017 when Heartland was celebrating its 30th anniversary as part of the Greencastle industrial landscape.

Heartland is “not expanding any kind of footprint,” Clary said of the East Side plant, “so it’s not real property tax abatement, it is simply personal property tax abatement because of the machinery and equipment.”

Heartland, a Tier I supplier for Subaru at Lafayette, will add 32 jobs with addition of the new equipment, Clary said. The increase will bump the Heartland workforce to 455 employees.

The new equipment will include a variety of machinery for making door assemblies to provide to the Subaru assembly plant.

Thursday night’s action simply declared the area an economic revitalization area “so it is available and appropriate to provide tax abatement,” Clary said.

At its October meeting, the Council will be asked to approve the actual 10-year tax abatement and additional information on wages and more will be available at that time, Clary said.

The resolution was passed unanimously after a motion by Dave Murray and second by Council President Adam Cohen. Adding affirmative votes were Council members Stacie Langdon, Steve Fields, Mark Hammer and Tyler Wade. Councilman Gary Lemon was absent.

With the demand for Subaru vehicles increasing and production ramping up at the Subaru plant over the past two years, more equipment and more jobs have made their way to Heartland. Besides the latest planned venture and the 2017 expansion, Heartland also added $8 million in new equipment and an additional 48 jobs in 2016.

Heartland Automotive, the 300,000-square-foot American headquarters for Shigeru Industries of Ota City, Japan, has made a habit of expanding its Putnam County operations during the past 30 years. Over that period, Heartland’s investment in equipment alone has well exceeded $50 million, local officials have noted.