Tax Breaks Keep Firm in Anaheim : Agreement: City’s deal with BACE Plastics will save 300 local jobs.

A growing manufacturing firm that had considered moving out of Anaheim has been promised a tax break of up to $550,000 over 11 years to change its plans and do its expanding within the city.

The deal is the second one approved by the City Council in the past three months as officials work to retain businesses that are finding it increasingly expensive to remain in Orange County.

Under the deal approved this week, BACE Plastics Group Inc. will receive the first payment--up to $50,000--in additional property-tax revenue that its planned expansion would generate for the city each year for the next 11 years.

In return, BACE, which has more than 300 employees and reported sales of $27 million last year, will stay in Anaheim, where it was founded in 1954.

The city’s Public Utility Department has also agreed to work with BACE, one of its largest customers, to devise conservation programs that will reduce its electric and water costs.

The City Council approved the deal on Tuesday.

BACE, which had offers to relocate to Temecula and to several other states including Arizona, Utah and Texas, agreed to move from its 90,000-square-foot plant on La Jolla Street to a 164,000-square-foot plant on Coronado Street.

BACE also agreed to pay up to $1.7 million to refurbish the new plant and to employ at least 250 workers at all times during the 11-year term of the deal.

The pact is similar to one approved in January with Micro Technology Inc., a computer systems management and manufacturing firm, with annual sales of $105 million, that was preparing to move to Nevada.

“Our goal is to save jobs and save economic development in our city,” said Lisa Stipkovich, the city’s community development director. “Our choice with BACE Plastics was ‘do we want it here or do we want it somewhere else?’ We wanted it here. . . . The bottom line is that we kept the company here and kept more than 300 jobs in our community.”

Mike Noggle, BACE’s executive director, said the offers made by other localities were tempting because of the high cost of operating and expanding locally.

“As our business increased, we found it more and more difficult to be competitive while being located in Anaheim and in the county of Orange,” Noggle said.

“We are still not going to be as competitive here as we would be if we were located in other places,” he said. “But we have continued over the years to grow, and we owe a great debt to our employees and we did not want to put them out of work by moving.”

Stipkovich said the city will continue to work with large employers who wish to remain there. Noggle said he hopes the program succeeds.

“We want to see the city keep its tax base,” Noggle said. “I don’t want to stay here and see other businesses leave. People think that because we’ve got Disneyland and great weather, companies are not going to want to leave, but that’s not the case. They have to be competitive.”