Council OKs tax break for Peterman Brothers expansion

The Greenwood City Council approved a $220,000 tax break to help a southside company expand its footprint and build a new trade school.

Council members voted 8-1 to approve the three-year real property tax abatement. Council member Bob Dine voted no.

Peterman Brothers, a heating, cooling and plumbing company, plans to build a $6.5 million, 54,000-square-foot building at its current location in the Precedent South Business Center, just east of the Interstate 65 and Main Street interchange. The project will include a new warehouse and trade school. The expansion would add about 150 new employees and pay them $22 an hour, according to city documents.

More than 15,000 square feet of the project will be for the trade school, dubbed the Peterman Top Tech Academy. The academy began last October and is now run out of the Peterman Brothers’ former facility near Stop 11 Road and Emerson Avenue in Indianapolis. The tax break would allow the company to move the school to its Greenwood facility after the next class graduates.

The company will still pay $110,038 in taxes over the next three years, city documents show.