Empty shelves at Pitney Bowes Fulfillment, Delivery and Returns Super Center are seen in October 2018, before the facility was at full production capabilities. The company recently announced it would be laying off 311 employees as the result of changing business needs.
Daily Journal File Photo
The remaining years of a Greenwood shipping facility’s $3.3 million tax break have been terminated.
The Greenwood City Council unanimously voted 8-0 — with one member absent — Monday night to terminate the remaining years of the tax abatement given to Pitney Bowes Inc., a Stamford, Connecticut-based global high-tech shipping company. A public hearing was held on the termination, but no one from the public or the company spoke during the hearing.
Pitney Bowes’ Greenwood facility, 1415 Collins Road, officially opened in October 2018. It was the first facility to be built in the 350-acre business park east of the Worthsville Road and Interstate 65 interchange in Greenwood. The company acquired Newgistics, a national distribution company, in 2017.
Newgistics was given a 10-year tax break on both the $20 million building and $16 million in high-tech equipment by the city council in 2017. The abatement was transferred to Pitney Bowes as a result of acquisition, and less than five years remained on the abatement when the abatement was terminated Monday.
City council members decided to end the abatement following Pitney Bowes’ announcement that “changing business needs” require them to permanently close the parcel delivery and returns department of the facility. The closure will result in the layoff of 240 employees and 71 temporary workers, the company said in a notice to the state of Indiana on June 27.
Despite the layoffs, Pitney Bowes plans to continue to run an e-commerce fulfillment operation of its approximately 446,400-square-foot Greenwood facility. The parcel delivery and returns operation is being shifted to two of the company’s other Midwest hubs to “more efficiently meet client demands,” Brett Cody, the company’s senior director of communications, told the Daily Journal last month.
Affected employees were notified of the layoffs on June 27, company officials said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
The parcel department will officially close on Sept. 4, with the layoffs expected to take place from Sept. 4 to Sept. 18 as the company “winds down activities.” The employees do not have bumping rights, or the right to change positions within the company, the notice says.
The employees who are affected have been offered retention and severance if they stay with the company until September, Cody said.
In the resolution on the termination, the city council said they had determined on April 17 the company was in substantial compliance with the statement of benefits form they submitted to the city. Companies receiving tax breaks from the city are required to submit these forms annually. A company is usually found in substantial compliance if they had met or exceeded job growth goals or wage growth goals, as examples.
Pitney Bowes officials said in the form that they currently employed 303 additional employees, which was well above the initial goal of 224 employees as listed on their original abatement application. However, in light of the layoff announcement, the company is no longer in compliance with the job goal, which prompted the council to pursue termination, city documents show.
