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Scott Malone, the President of the Development Authority of LaGrange, presented two Memorandums of Understanding (MOU), to the Troup County School Board on Monday. The board will vote on acknowledging the MOU at Thursday’s meeting. 

MOUs are agreements between parties to lay out expectations of a partnership. In the two presented at Monday night’s work session, the partnership would be between two companies, the school board, the city of LaGrange, the County’s Board of Tax Assessors, and the Development Authority. 

The board signs off on companies when there are certain tax exemptions in the contract. In this case, the companies would do a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement. PILOTs are payments to offset losses of property taxes, which helps to fund the public school system in Troup County. PILOTs act as tax abatements to attract businesses to the area.

Both companies would be located at the Calloway South Industrial Park. 

The two companies the DAL is working with to come to LaGrange, are referred to as Project Eagle and Project Crow and will be announced at a later date. Project Eagle has been in the works for seven years. 

“It’s a $288,000,000 investment, about 300 jobs. The average pay is in the $67,000 to $68,000 range,” Malone said. “It’s a company that makes sauces teriyaki oyster sauces, and Asian sauces. It is very well known, a global company, a multibillion-dollar company…But for us, it’s diversification away from automotive.” 

Each year in business the company will pay a percentage of the taxes they would have accrued, which increases every year. For Project Eagle, in Year 1, the company would pay 10 percent of the tax, and in Year 2 it would rise to 12 percent, and so on until the percentage equals 100 percent of the tax. The payments will equal the total percentage of property tax in 21 years.

Project Crow is involved in the automotive industry. Crow Holdings LLC is the owner of the building, however KIA is leasing it.

“Kia actually leased the building for the EV9 project, the electric vehicle that’ll roll off later this month down in West Point. It’s a sequencing warehouse for the EV9 and so they’ll be putting parts together and then shipping them down to KIA to finish out,” Malone said.  

In the case of Project Crow, the tax abatement is shorter. In Year 1, the company will pay 35 percent of the property tax. The company will pay in full by the Year 8.