Fayetteville’s City Council on Tuesday approved an incentives package offering millions of dollars in tax rebates to a titanium reclamation plant eyeing the city as a place to set up shop.
The council voted 9-1 to approve the proposed package following a public hearing. Council Member Mario Benavente cast the lone vote in opposition.
Cumberland County’s Board of Commissioners approved a similar incentive program on May 20. And on May 6, commissioners gave preliminary approval to allow the Cumberland County Industrial Facility and Pollution Control Financing Authority to issue $1.3 billion in bonds to pay for the project, CityView previously reported. Under the terms, the county government and taxpayers would not be liable if American Titanium Metal defaults on the loans.
With Tuesday’s vote, the city is formally teaming up with the county to attempt to lure “Project Aero,” as the project has been named. American Titanium Metal is considering other states for its plant, but with this package, over the first two decades of the plant’s operation, the city of Fayetteville would refund tens of millions of dollars of the facility’s property taxes in the form of grants.
It’s one of several incentives the joint city-county initiative would offer the company if its owners chose to locate in Fayetteville.
The city also voted to contribute $535,000 for water and sewer infrastructure to the project, a figure the county will match. The city and county would also purchase 120 acres of privately owned, unincorporated land for the factory’s operations, which Fayetteville would then annex. The site for the proposed factory is next to the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant, off Ramsey Street, just outside of the northern city limits. It’s less than a mile from the Cape Fear River, and just over a mile from Pine Forest Middle School.
The plant would represent a $895 million investment in the local economy in its first phase, Robert Van Geons, the president and CEO of the Fayetteville Cumberland Economic Development Corporation, told the council Tuesday. American Titanium Metal plans in its initial phase to hire 300 people with an average employee salary of $120,000 — and minimum salary of $85,000 — adding more than $36 million in annual payroll. In the second phase, the project would bring 100 additional jobs and $300 million more in investment, valuing the project at more than $1 billion, Van Geons said.
“Today is your opportunity to make a statement regarding your desire to have this project here,” Van Geons told the council. “Approving it tonight would officially get us to the table … A good analogy is: This is a date, this is not yet a marriage.”
Despite the promise of investment, good jobs and clean operations, three speakers during the public hearing portion of Tuesday’s meeting voiced harsh opposition to the project. Each raised “red flags” about the proposed plant, including a lack of available information about the company — such as the names of its investors — or a track record showing it would make good on promises to the local governments.
Publicly available information about the American Titanium Metal LLC is scarce. It incorporated in Delaware on Sept. 11, according to records with the Delaware Secretary of State. Officials with American Titanium Metal declined an interview request with CityView on May 23.
Daniel Gallant, who spoke in opposition to approving the incentives, gave a stark warning during his three-minute address. He cautioned the council to be careful when implementing private-public partnerships.
“What the gentleman is proposing is an outright investment blind,” Gallant told the council, referring to Van Geons’ incentives proposal. “The Securities and Exchange Commission would blow their stack at this. How do you determine what you personally make an investment on, other than the information that’s provided to you? These people are ghosts.”
Lisette Rodriguez, a local activist and community organizer, also questioned the lack of available data about the company and the types of jobs it promises to provide. She compared the proposed project to the Amazon factory in Fayetteville, which the city and county also invested in, but has sat vacant for months and its opening continually delayed for unexplained reasons.
“These types of projects tend to overpromise and underperform,” Rodriguez told the council. She also raised concerns about its proximity to the Cape Fear River, which has been polluted heavily by PFAS manufacturing company Chemours and its predecessor, DuPont.
“We have residents who can’t even drink the water that comes out of their tap, and the city and council want to potentially give millions in tax breaks to a faceless, nameless company,” Rodriguez said. “Why should our tax dollars go to fit the bill for a company that will potentially be worth millions or billions? I fear that we might have another Chemours and DuPont situation, or that this will turn out like Amazon, who promises jobs and builds warehouses, but ultimately they sit empty in cities across America so that it can be a tax write-off.”
Van Geons denied that the factory would have any detrimental environmental impact.
“As far as on the environmental side here, important to note, this would be connected to PWC sewer, and at every stage of this, it would be tested, pre-treated if needed, and then put into the PWC sewer system,” Van Geons said. “There would be no discharges off of the site beyond that, and it would begin a minor air permit project.”
Now that the city and county have agreed to provide incentives, Van Geons said the next step is for the company to assess the proposal, weighing it against its other location options, and consult with state officials about bringing operations to North Carolina.
“If they decide to move forward, they would be working with the state in the near term, and then we’d imagine that a decision would follow pretty soon thereafter,” Van Geons said. “It is not a 2025 conversation.”
Budget meeting
The council also held a public hearing on the city’s proposed fiscal year 2024-25 budget. Most of the 15 people who spoke used their time during the public hearing to call for additional funding of the city’s proposed Office of Community Safety and alternative response programs. Other speakers argued against the proposed tax rate increase — raising it from 10 cents to 21 cents — of the Downtown Municipal Service District, a tax that only applies to property owners of for-profit businesses.
Following the hearing, the council opted to vote on the budget at the next city council meeting. That meeting, a work session, will take place at 2 p.m. on June 3 at City Hall, 433 Hay St. A final vote to adopt the budget is set to take place at the next regular city council meeting on June 10.
Contact Evey Weisblat at eweisblat@cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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Thank you for the mention! I believe a “deep dive” into Mr Geons, The NC School Of Government-Chapple Hill and how influential “The School” has become in both the Fayetteville City Council’s and Cumberland County Commissioner’s decision making.
Given my experience in “investment banking”, this entire project would easily equate to pitching a penny stock from a boileroom phone bank! Where is the Prospectus, the Corporate Financials, a listing of Corporate Officers? We’re being asked to invest in a Ghost!!
Lastly, these “dirt bonds” will be introduced into a market clearly in free-fall! To make the irresponsible inferrancy that local government will have no responsibility is patently ludicrous!!! In the final analysis, these and all Corporate and Government Bonds WILL BE MONETIZED ULTIMATELY BY THE FED and ADDED TO THE OBCENITY THAT IS OUR NATIONAL DEBT!!!
THIS entire project “reeks from the stench of mendacity”!!!