Border war: Shawnee claims 100 Kansas City jobs with state-aided HQ move
About 100 jobs are leaving Kansas City in a state-assisted headquarters move across the state line.
PBI-Gordon Corp., which has had its headquarters in Kansas City's West Bottoms since 1981, bought the one-time Perceptive Software building at 22701 W. 68th Terrace in Shawnee. The building had been vacant for years and faced foreclosure two years ago.
PBI-Gordon makes an assortment of turf and landscape products as well as animal health, nutrition and grooming products.
"Our team looked concurrently at properties on both sides of the state line," PBI-Gordon finance chief Andrew Peck said in an announcement of the move. "In the end, the building at Shawnee Crossing gives us room to grow, the ability to make improvements to fit our needs, and we’ll own the property instead of leasing."
A Kansas Department of Commerce official acknowledged work on an incentives contract is underway but said it was incomplete.
"This is something we've been working on a little while," said Ann Smith-Tate, president and CEO of the Shawnee Economic Development Council.
She said the city has provided no financial incentives in the company's move.
Several years ago, Shawnee was on the losing end of an incentive-supported move involving the buildings. Perceptive Software relocated 750 employees from the West 68th Terrace building to a new headquarters built with tax-increment financing help on Renner Road in Lenexa. Perceptive Software was acquired in 2010 by Lexmark International, which sold the Perceptive operations to Thoma Bravo last year.
The Kansas City area has seen a number of companies move across the state line with financial assistance from one agency or another.
Last month, Overland Park snagged HCA Midwest Health's Kansas City headquarters with financial assistance from Kansas. In that move, the state declined to disclose details about the incentives, but Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer's office revealed terms of the $3 million deal and said it had been struck before he took office. Colyer, a plastic surgeon, works for the hospital chain.
Similarly, the Dairy Farmers of America received an $18 million incentives deal in 2015 to move its Kansas City headquarters about 20 miles and into Kansas City, Kan., and opened the new building last summer.
Missouri has claimed its own victories, luring CBIZ and Mayer Hoffman McCann from Leawood to Kansas City in 2014.
Missouri and Kansas officials have alternatively offered peace to the other but so far without completing a truce.
PBI-Gordon plans to move into its new headquarters by the end of this year. It has about 400 total employees, including those in manufacturing facilities in Kansas City, Kan., and in Missouri, Illinois and Florida.
This story was originally published March 28, 2018 at 2:53 PM with the headline "Border war: Shawnee claims 100 Kansas City jobs with state-aided HQ move."