Hoover council gives $580,000 tax break to keep industrial company

The Hoover City Council on Monday night agreed to abate about $580,000 worth of property and sales taxes for a Hoover industrial company to allow it to consolidate its offices and expand its presence in the city.

Revere Control Systems, a company that engineers, assembles and installs automation and control systems, currently has its headquarters and other operations in 12 buildings along Rocky Ridge Road near Interstate 65 and needs room to expand its operations and consolidate at the same time, said Jason English, the company’s chief financial officer.

There are only a few industrial sites in Hoover, so Revere’s Realtor was looking at potential places for the company to relocate in St. Clair and south Shelby County. But Hoover’s economic development team figured out a way to keep Revere in Hoover and convert a long-vacant retail site into a productive piece of property.

Economic developer Greg Knighton proposed the former Winn-Dixie grocery store property at the intersection of Interstate 459 and John Hawkins Parkway as an option, and Revere liked the idea.

The 15-acre site would work well for Revere if rezoned as a research and development zone, a new zoning classification recently created by the Hoover City Council, Knighton said. The type of work that Revere does involves engineering and assembly and fits into that “research and development” category, he said. It’s “a quiet but quite impressive company,” he said.

So Revere plans to invest $9.6 million into acquiring and redeveloping the site for its use, consolidating all of its operations in Hoover into one facility, Knighton said.

Revere has other offices in Charlotte, Texarkana, Texas, and Lakeland, Florida, English said. The company has about 250 employees, 106 of whom are based out of Hoover, he said. Revere just acquired another company in Shelby County and plans to bring those employees into the Hoover office, bringing total employees in Hoover to about 150, Knighton said.

The company plans to add about 20 new jobs over the next three years, with average salaries of about $70,000 a year, Knighton said.

The company had about $45 million in sales in fiscal 2021, which ended June 20, and with its new acquisition, expects $70 million in sales in fiscal 2022, English said.

Knighton noted that the old Winn-Dixie site, now owned by Hoover Baptist Medical, has not produced any tax revenue since 2012 because Hoover Baptist Medical was exempt from paying property taxes.

With Revere investing $9.1 million on the property, the property value will rise, and the company will pay more than $43,000 a year in real property taxes to Hoover City Schools and more than $14,000 in personal property taxes on new equipment purchases, Knighton said. The renovation project also should generate $47,000 in building permit fees and $68,000 in indirect new sales tax revenue to the city over 10 years, Knighton said.

In total, the city and Hoover City Schools should gain more than $600,000 over 10 years, he said.

The taxes being abated include $441,384 worth of non-educational property taxes and $138,250 worth of construction-related sales and use taxes, for a total abatement of almost $580,000, according to the written agreement with the city. Of that, the city will lose about $182,000 in tax revenue, while the rest of the abatement is for state and Jefferson County taxes, Knighton said.

The economic development deal will bring new activity to that part of the city, provide immediate benefits to the city, school system and economy, and keep a valuable, growing business in the city, he said.

Construction is expected to begin immediately and take about a year, the company said in its application for the tax abatement.