Simi Valley Sweetens Business Incentive Package

The Simi Valley City Council waived an additional $63,800 in fees to sweeten an incentive package to entice Warner/Elektra/Atlantic Corp. to build a distribution center in the city.

In a unanimous decision Monday night, council members revised the $105,000 incentive plan they had approved one week earlier, an offer that displeased executives at the music and videotape firm, a Time Warner Inc. subsidiary.

Council members said the new offer--$168,800 toward city and sanitation district fees--was justified because of a new report stating that Warner/Elektra would bring more jobs and revenue than the council previously expected.

“I didn’t have any problem supporting it after we saw the true numbers,” Councilman Bill Davis said.

The city will use redevelopment funds to pay the development fees that Warner/Elektra would otherwise have been required to pay.

Warner/Elektra requested the incentive package in connection with a plan to move its warehouse next summer from a rented site in Chatsworth to a 200,000-square-foot building the firm wants to build in Simi Valley.

The council’s initial relocation assistance offer was based on an estimate that the company would create 160 local jobs, including 40 new positions.

WarnerElektra later revised this estimate, saying another 26 workers would be based in Simi Valley initially, and up to 40 more people would be hired when the warehouse is expanded in three to five years.

“We’re very happy about it,” Jac Lee, the company’s national director of facilities, said of the revised fee plan.