Wow.
So powerful are the incentives offered by the Midland Development Corporation that an aircraft powerplant manufacturer will load up all of their stuff on to trucks and move it to Midland on the basis of the MDC simply considering giving them an incentive to load up all of their stuff on to trucks and move it to Midland.
And Lord knows that a company whose only ties to this area are the "30 equity investors primarily from Midland and Odessa" that essentially own the company in question, would never in a million years move here without these after-the-fact incentives currently being considered.
Pegging the irony meter: The company has purchased and plans to move in to the former TMP Trailer manufacturing building. Does that building ring a bell to anyone?
Anyone? Anyone?
Bueller?
Let me refresh your memory.
It is the same building that was involved in another MDC giveaway.
I will always remember that particular article for it, out of all of the column inches given over to dressing up our system of legal corporate kickbacks, let slip the only real truth that you have read:
"We were going to do the project regardless but it was nice that the city wanted to take part on that level,' Patterson said."
Perhaps sometime in the next week or so someone from the new company will stop unloading trucks long enough to take up the MDC on their soon-to-be forthcoming incentive package.
7 Comments
Wasn't this also the same company that was going to occupy the STILL EMPTY $2-$3 million building which the MDC built totally on spec?
This is the same company. The La Entrada Spec Building was at the center of the development package, but the 22 acres offered by the empty TMP facility just worked out better.
In a March 2005 story in the MRT and reviewed here at JW, this company has lots of Midland/Odessa owners and was proported to be a $20M company.
You add up $50K already spent on the TMP building they are using, $456K from the State of Texas and I would figure about $500K from the MDC, this venture has public funding equal to 5%.
Trust me I'm glad we got this facility. But at this point I think ED money isn't bringing business here, it is just reducing the risk and shortening the pay-back for the investors.
On the other hand, some are saying the MDC has been backing off the hard hitting efforts to diversify because the labor market is so tight and housing is so scarce all the ED money in the world isn't going to lure an operation here.
The MDC will hand over half a million dollars of the taxpayers money so they can then count another "114 Jobs Created" on the cut and paste job that constitutes their monthly report.
Is this new company buying the TMP property from TMP or did it already change hands or fall into the MDC (I don;'t think it did, though some of this discussion sounds that way. Maybe TMP should be put in charge of building new things for the MDC. They can build their own buidligns with an extra 50k thrown in by the city everytime then sell them to a new business. %%%%% this sounds almost like the old way of doing economic development-privately.
I just looked at the monthly report linked here and where did the 200 jobs come from? The May report showed ZERO jobs created from MDC activity this fiscal year.
Who snuck 200 jobs in?
Well I dont guess Paul Thorpe will be an owner anymore. he he he
Walsingham is right! According to the Story in the MRT over a year ago, this $20 million dollar company has lots of local ownership:
Franz Weis (of VDS Racing), Li Fei (of Hongdu Aviation Industry Group in the People's Republic of China), Milan Matusik (a part-owner of Texas Recip), Curtis Leonard, (counsel for MCM Aviation in Odessa, which has a substantial interest in the $20 million company) and Paul Thorpe, (a former professional baseball player in the San Francisco Giants).
My guess is that between the $50k spent on the TMP Location, $456k from the state of Texas and MDC I guess is going to throw in at least $500k, means the public should own a 5% stake in a $20M dollar company for our $1M investment.
Here's an old Jessica's Well entry on this subject