Council moves close to business deal

Marion County Council inched closer to a resolution with Carolina Aerated Autoclaved Concrete (AAC) during this past Thursday’s meeting.

“We’ve been working really hard on this,” Council member Allan Floyd said. “This would bring about 50 jobs to the county,” he said.

Carolina AAC specializes in the creation of a lightweight building material, which provides a high amount of insulation, fire and mold resistance, as well as a sound structures base.

Will Johnson, a representative of Carolina AAC, said that a new grant from the Economic Development Administration would soften the cost of bringing Carolina AAC to Marion County alleviating the cost of taxpayer dollars.

“If the application were approved, Marion County would get that grant money which would be used to pay for the construction of the building that would house the AAC project,” he said.

The building that would be built to house the AAC would then be leased to the company for approximately twenty years according to Johnson.

“The county would enter into a formal lease agreement with the company that would provide that the lease would be structured so that the company would pay any cost that the county incurs,” he said.

“The county would not have any out of pocket expenditures as a result of owning this land,” he added.

The grant application in question could reach a total of $6 million, he said.

“From what we understand, the grant would be approved for 70 percent and the applicant would have to come up with 30 percent from another source,” Johnson said.

Johnson and the council agree that the best source of obtaining the remaining 30 percent of the monetary funds required to exceed the project would be from recovery zone bonds.

Recovery zone bonds were created through The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, signed into law by President George W. Bush.

“Every county in the country has a certain dollar amount of recovery zone bonds that it can issue,” Johnson said.

Marion County has $2.6 million that it may allocate by the end of 2010, he said. If the bonds are not issued by the deadline, they will be lost, Johnson said.

“The county is not on the hook for anything (monetarily) as a result of what we are doing tonight,” Johnson said. “This would be terrific for the company and the county,” he added.