Olathe has signed off on $75 million more in incentives for the Heartland Coca-Cola bottling plant underway in the city’s southern corner.
Last week, the Olathe City Council issued the industrial revenue bonds 5-0 for the bottling facility. The bonds also come with a 10-year, 55% property tax abatement.
Councilmembers Kevin Gilmore and Matt Schoonover were absent from the meeting last Tuesday.
The planned multi-building bottling plant campus is located near 167th Street and Hedge Lane.
Looking back on the Coca-Cola project:
- The Lenexa-based regional division of Coca-Cola announced plans to build a new Olathe campus for bottling and distribution two years ago.
- Since the first public action in late 2022, Olathe has taken several additional steps for the development, including approving site plans and formalizing a benefit district to help cover the cost of infrastructure improvements.
Olathe has offered $810M in incentives to Coca-Cola
- The $75 million in bonds doled out last week is part of a larger roughly $810 million incentive package Olathe formalized its intent to issue last year.
- Olathe has already issued a large chunk of those bonds, including a $350 million issuance last month for the project.
- The full package is expected to help finance multiple phases of development for the bottling campus in southern Olathe.
- Coca-Cola’s chief sales officer Kevin Shea said in 2022 the new production campus will be high-tech.
650+ employees could work at Olathe plant
- Heartland Coca-Cola anticipates more than one million square feet of new construction at the Olathe plant in all.
- A 2023 staff report indicates that the campus could have as many as 675 employees at full scale with an average starting salary of $55,000.
- In 2022, Shea estimated close to 175 employees would be hired for the first phase.
- The first building on the campus could open as soon as this year, though the exact timeline is unclear at this point.
Keep reading: Olathe warehouse project spurs bigger question: What are incentives for?
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