The McKinney City Council is set to nominate electronics manufacturer Lite-On Inc. for a state incentive that would refund part of the sales tax the company pays while it fits out two industrial buildings on Cypress Hill Drive that will house its operations in North America.
The resolution, on the consent agenda for the council's 6 p.m. meeting Tuesday, Nov. 17, asks the Office of the Governor's Economic Development and Tourism division and the Economic Development Bank to grant Lite-On "triple jumbo" project status in the state's Enterprise Zone Program. A business cannot receive the program's state tax incentives unless the local community nominates it, according to the city staff report.
The refunds would come only from the state's 6.25% portion of sales tax on taxable purchases, the report says, so the nomination carries no local fiscal impact for McKinney. If the state approves, the designation would run five years from that date.
Lite-On, a unit of Lite-On Technology Corporation, bought the two buildings at 300 and 310 Cypress Hill Drive, which together cover roughly 650,000 square feet, the staff report says. Over the five years after it gets a certificate of occupancy, the company intends to spend as much as $567 million upgrading the buildings and installing production equipment, and a further $150 million on R&D equipment.
The report counts 600 full-time jobs that Lite-On expects to move to, add at or keep at the site, paying what staff calls an "average median salary" of $91,944. As many as 250 of those would be net new jobs over the first five years, averaging $118,000 a year. Staff describes Lite-On's products as opto-semiconductors, power supply systems and other advanced electronics.
Among the grounds the draft resolution gives for treating Lite-On as a qualified business: at least 35% of the new permanent positions will be filled by veterans, economically disadvantaged workers or people who live in an enterprise zone.
