The Lynchburg Economic Development Authority adopted a revised policy for giving incentives to local businesses this week.
The changes will set limits on the monetary value of incentives and formalizes the process of paying to connect businesses to high-speed Internet. The new policy will make incentives available to more kinds of companies, said Mark Varah, a member of the EDA’s incentives committee.
The EDA last revised its incentive policy in 2006. Since then it has agreed to incentives such as $1 million for infrastructure improvements supporting Areva’s expansion.
The new rules set a $350,000 ceiling on the amount the EDA will pay to support capital investments, such as new construction or renovations. “In the past, they haven’t had limits except 2 percent (of) what the company had spent on an expansion,” said Marjette Upshur, Lynchburg’s director of economic development.
The new policy still deter-mines the size of an incentive as 2 percent of capital investments under $10 million and 1 percent of investments over that amount, until the ceiling is reached.
According to that formula, a $20 million capital investment would attract a $300,000 incentive from the EDA, according to a News & Advance calculation. That money could be a cash grant or could help with road or water line construction that supports the expansion, Upshur said.
The new policy also adds a section allowing the EDA to pay to connect a business to a high-speed Internet line. The EDA would pay all of the cost of ex-tending telecommunication lines to a building. This incentive would be $2,000 but could exceed that if other businesses in the area could benefit from the extended line.
Last year the EDA paid to connect a building on Fort Avenue to an nTelos fiber-optic Internet line. Upshur said the new policy formalizes the incentive and will let other companies know that the city will support needs such as Internet infrastructure.
Other incentives offered by the EDA include research grants and low-cost office space for technology companies and grants based on hiring full-time employees with health benefits.
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