Burlington Township Council grants tax abatement to company for development at former Hercules plant site
Clarion Partners plans to build fourth warehouse on the site
Burlington Township Council recently approved an ordinance granting a tax abatement to a New York real estate firm planning to build a warehouse on the site of the former Hercules industrial plant.
The company, Clarion Partners, has already constructed three warehouses on the site, which is designated as a redevelopment area. It is located along Neck Road near the Delaware River.
A Clarion subsidiary called Lion-FGC Burlington, LLC, plans to build a 192,380-square-foot warehouse and lease it to a tenant, according to the ordinance.
Township Administrator Walter Corter said other tenants at the warehouse complex, which is known as Burlington Industrial Park, include American Hotel Register, a hospitality supply company, and clothing retailer H&M.
The ordinance approved at Township Council’s March 27 meeting allows the municipality to enter into a five-year tax exemption agreement with Clarion.
Corter said the agreement means Clarion will not pay taxes to the township for the first year. The firm will then pay 20 percent of the total tax rate in the second year of the agreement and 40 percent of the rate in the third year, and so on until the full tax rate is phased in at the end of the agreement, Corter said.
Clarion has told township officials it would not be able to secure a tenant without the tax abatement, according to the ordinance.
The ordinance also says the tax exemption agreement will foster economic development and improve the township’s tax base.
“They (Clarion) did a lot of remediation work in a brown zone,” Corter said.
The large site where the industrial park is located used to be the home of Hercules Burlington Plant. It’s a facility that produced herbicides, detergent ingredients, and hard and liquid resins, among other things, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The plant closed in 1993, but a cleanup had to be conducted before the site could be redeveloped due to environmental contamination, according to the EPA.
Corter said the remediation work was completed several years ago. A report on the EPA’s website says the cleanup included excavating some contaminated soil and capping portions of the site to isolate environmental hazards.
This fourth building will be the smallest warehouse in the 1.58 million-square-foot industrial park, according to a website for the development. It is set to include parking for 40 trailers, 38 overhead doors and two drive-in doors with a ramp.
