Rogers gives incentive to company

ROGERS -- A logistics company planning to move its Lowell offices and employees to Rogers has an incentive to do so.

The City Council on Tuesday voted to endorse Texas-based Transplace to take part in the tax-back program.

Other action

Rogers’s City Council met Tuesday and approved:

• An amendment to the budget to accept a $3,000 grant for the Rogers Public Library for a summer intern’s salary.

• Rezoning 2120 Town West Drive from light industrial and heavy industrial to the light industrial zoning district at the request by Actionpaq Corp.

Source: Staff Report

"It provides for state income tax credits for jobs created and for sales tax rebates on building materials and those items that are sales taxable in the state of Arkansas," said Raymond Burns, president and chief executive officer at the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce.

Transplace broke ground in March on its 148,200-square-foot building at the northeast corner of Interstate 49 and Magnolia Farms Road in west Rogers.

The Lowell office has around 750 employees, and the plan is to add 400 jobs over the course of three years after Transplace moves into its Rogers office in early 2021, according to an email from Stephen Dye, account director.

"This was a competitive project," Burns said. "We were in competition with other locations."

The council also agreed to rezone about 8 acres on the west side of South 28th Street and West Chateau Drive east of Interstate 49 to allow an apartment complex, The Reserve at Osage Creek, to be built. The rezoning was from residential multifamily with up to 16 units per acre to residential multifamily with up to 18 units per acre.

The complex is to have three-story apartments and two-story duplexes totaling 144 units, according to planning documents.

The city also has the green light to submit its plans to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for how Rogers intends to spend about $460,000 in community development block grants. Donna Johnston, grant administrator, said the plan is for the money to go to organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club; Court Appointed Special Advocates, a program where volunteers work with abused or neglected children; the Sunshine School and Development Center, which provides services such as speech, occupational, physical and behavioral therapy for kids; and Open Avenues, which focuses on job training and other services for people with disabilities.

The city also officially entered into an agreement with Washington County so it can use the crisis stabilization unit opening this month. The state approved a pilot program of four crisis stabilization units in Craighead, Pulaski, Sebastian and Washington counties. The units are intended to divert people with mental health issues away from the criminal justice system.

"The whole intent of this is to keep people out of jail," Police Chief Hayes Minor said.

Minor said, for example, if someone attempted suicide and told officers they were planning to do it again, officers could take him or her to the crisis stabilization unit to get help.

All items passed unanimously with council member Barney Hayes absent.

NW News on 06/12/2019

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