Artist's rendering of one concrete warehouse, with others in background. Windows would be false. (Luckett & Farley) |
By Aayat Ali
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media
Brown-Forman Corp. is asking permission to build 12
two-story whiskey warehouses on a farm next to Midway Station and South Elkhorn
Creek.
The Louisville distiller’s application for a conditional use
permit will be considered by the Agricultural Review Committee of the county
Planning and Zoning Commission on April 13 at 8 a.m. at the county courthouse.
“They will make a recommendation to our Board of
Adjustment,” said P & Z Director Patricia Wilson. “They are requesting to build 12 barrel
warehouses to store bourbon in, two buildings every other year, as needed.”
Brown-Forman says that since bourbon is a product made from
grains, building the warehouses on farmland is an agricultural enterprise that
fits the A-1 agricultural zone. It also says the warehouses would reduce the
possibility of industrial development on the land.
The warehouses would be built on 117 acres of a 400-acre
farm over the next 10 years. Each
two-story high, 900,000-square-foot warehouse would hold about 65,000 barrels
of Woodford Reserve bourbon. The farm
would continue operating as a farm, according to the company’s application.
The farm is owned by the Homer Michael Freeney Jr. Trust. It
borders the industrial section of Midway Station on the south, Elkhorn Creek on
the east, another farm on the north and Georgetown Road on the west. Access to
the warehouses would be from Georgetown Road.
The state Economic Development Cabinet announced March 31
that it had approved Brown-Forman for $400,000 in tax incentives on an
estimated initial investment of $22 million.
Brown-Forman says the full cost of development is $120 million, and has asked the Woodford County Fiscal Court to
issue that amount of industrial revenue bonds in order to give the project a
property-tax break. The request will be
discussed at the next Fiscal Court meeting on April 12, said Timothy Eifler of Stoll Keenon
Ogden, the attorneys for Brown-Forman.
“The county is not on the hook for the bonds,” Eifler
said in an interview. “It’s not a true borrowing in the
sense that the county is not borrowing money or liable for it. “Brown-Forman
will be making lease payments that will pay repay those bonds.”
“The warehouses won’t
cost the local government anything, they just generate revenue,” Eifler said. He said each fully loaded warehouse would
generate approximately $153,000 in property taxes on the whiskey.
“They don’t demand any resources from local government,”
Eifler said. “It’s not a like a
manufacturing plant where more people will be moving into the county or putting
a tax on local resources. All they do is
generate a lot of property tax because of the amount of barrels that would get
taxed annually.”
The Board of Adjustment may choose to hold a public hearing
on May 2 at 6:30 p.m. if the Agricultural Review Committee approves the plan on
Wednesday.
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