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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe Westfield City Council on Monday night approved two tax abatements—one for an existing business seeking to expand and the other for a business that would be new to the city.
Roundtripper Baseball Academy and an affiliate of The Peterson Co. both were granted the tax breaks in return for their plans to boost employment in the Hamilton County city.
Roundtripper Baseball Academy
Roundtripper Baseball Academy, which operates a 35,000-square-foot baseball and softball training facility at 16708 S. Park Drive, plans to spend $2.6 million to add about 25,000 square feet to its facility. The expansion would house "smart" batting cages that collect data from users that Roundtripper could provide to sports research and development companies.
Roundtripper was one of the first sports businesses to open in Westfield nearly 25 years ago, long before Grand Park was conceived. About two years ago, Roundtripper’s owners, Sue and Chris Estep, squabbled with city leaders after they pitched operating their facility at Grand Park and then missed the formal opportunity to bid on a proposal to build a baseball training facility at the sports campus. Instead, the city chose Pro X Athlete Development, which is run by Westfield Mayor Andy Cook's nephew, for the project.
On Monday night, Roundtripper requested both a personal and real-property tax abatement from the city. The real-property tax abatement approved by the council is a traditional 10-year deduction that phases in taxes by 10% each year. The personal property tax abatement is for five years and phases in taxes by 20% each year. The abatements would save the business about $306,000 in total.
The tax breaks are “crucially important to keep this location vibrant, grow it into the next 15 years and give the youth in this community as well as our professional athletes the top training academy in the nation,” Sue Estep told the council.
“With this expansion, this will be a training academy like no other in the nation,” she said.
Roundtripper has 25 employees and plans to add 20 more with the expansion.
The Peterson Co.
The council also approved an eight-year real-property tax abatement for BCNP LLC, an affiliate of Indianapolis-based The Peterson Co., which plans to build a 67,000-square-foot office and warehouse building at 2021 Bastian Court, near the new Bastian Solutions facility.
The abatement, which would save the company about $472,000, would be passed on to Browning Chapman, which plans to lease the space from Peterson.
Peterson would spend about $4 million constructing the new building.
Browning Chapman, a specialty contracting firm currently operating in Fishers, would move its 110 employees from Fishers, where it has outgrown its facility, to Westfield.
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