Plastic packaging company eyes large manufacturing facility in Lee’s Summit
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Graham Packaging proposes a Lee’s Summit plant with about 215,000 square feet.
- The project would bring 82 jobs with an average wage of around $83,000.
- Company requests a 75% personal property tax abatement for five years.
A plastic packaging company has floated plans for opening a manufacturing facility in an existing Lee’s Summit warehouse off Tudor Road and has proposed to city officials a tax incentive package to help fund the effort.
Pennsylvania-based Graham Packaging, which makes a wide range of plastic items, like motor oil bottles, drink bottles, food containers and home care product containers, brought forward the proposal to City Council members in a presentation at their Tuesday night meeting.
Company representatives said the company would plan to bring in around $33.7 million worth of machinery and equipment to about 215,000 square feet of a facility in the Lee’s Summit Commerce Center and said the project would have 82 jobs, which would have an average wage of around $83,000.
“This isn’t an expansion project, which already has all your desk positions there, and you just need some additional production jobs,” said Kathy Mussio, a project consultant. “These are everything from a plant manager to an entry-level person who has the ability to move up the ranks.”
The company is targeting the opening of its first manufacturing line by the end of this year and having all lines operational by the end of 2028, Mussio said.
The company is pitching a 75% personal property tax abatement for five years, in three installments. The value to the company would be around $1.7 million, according to city officials. Mussio said the company is asking for the tax abatement to reduce some of the facility’s operational costs early on as it gets established.
Joe Perry, the president of the Lee’s Summit Economic Development Council, hailed the project and the payroll that would come with it.
“This is the kind of workforce opportunity that all of us in the economic development community want to see,” he said.
“We’re growing in health care, we’re growing in retail, we’re growing in higher ed and other education platforms,” he added. “These people coming for these jobs with this amount of payroll are going to be spending money in all of those things that we’re importing now instead of exporting as a city. I’m delighted.”
Any incentives for the project would need approval from City Council. Tuesday’s presentation was only an informational session, and generally, council members gave the project positive feedback.
“We welcome companies such as yours to come into this community,” said Mayor Beto Lopez. “We’re very privileged to have this opportunity.”
“The fact that these employees could potentially live in Lee’s Summit — hopefully they all live in Lee’s Summit — but at the very least will support the commercial retail that surrounds the area, that is what makes this ecosystem work as a whole,” he said. “We have a lot of retail surrounding that location.”
