The mystery of who has been eyeing a prime piece of Louisville commercial real estate for a major new corporate outpost has been solved.
The company is Medtronic, the world’s largest manufacturer of insulin pumps, catheters and other medical devices, and the Louisville City Council on Tuesday will discuss whether or not to offer $1.5 million in incentives to lure it to town.
Medtronic employs around 2,000 people in the Denver metro area, according to a staff summary included in next week’s Louisville City Council agenda. It is looking to relocate those workers and add 500 to 1,000 more at a new campus over the next several years. It is considering a chunk of land northwest of the U.S. 36-Northwest Parkway interchange in southern Louisville for that project, according to that summary.
The property is the former corporate home of data storage firm StorageTek. A decade ago, ConocoPhillips was planning a state-of-the-art energy research lab there with 7,000 jobs but the project never materialized. Today is it owned by Phillips 66 which has been actively trying to sell it and now has a contract with a potential buyer.
This summer, Denver development firm Brue Baukol Capital Partners submitted plans to the city detailing an unnamed company’s desire to build a new corporate campus on the center portion of the property.
Louisville has competition. Medtronic, based in Dublin but with an operations headquarters in Minneapolis, is eyeing sites in Minnesota, Tennessee and other unnamed states for the project, the memo says.
The staff is recommending the City Council approve a tax rebated package worth just under $1.5 million to support the project. That’s more than 40% of roughly $3.5 million in fees and taxes the project is expected to bring into the city if built.
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In total, the campus could result in as much as 500,000 square feet in new construction by the end of 2022, and cost $133 million including furniture and equipment. Louisville is home to 500 Medtronic employees at other facilities today, the staff memo says, but the project could bring an additional 2,300 to 2,500 jobs to the city. The average worker at the campus would make between $100,000 and $150,000, better than the Boulder County average.
Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Louisville City Hall, 749 Main St.
