Offering a significant tax incentive, the Kansas Department of Commerce has lured another KCI Corridor business across the state line, according to reports in the Kansas City Business Journal. WireCo WorldGroup, which bills itself as the world’s leader in manufacturing, engineering and distributing wire rope, synthetic rope, specialized assemblies, wire products and electromechanical cable, has signed a lease for a 48,000-square-foot building for its headquarters in Prairie Village, Kan. The company currently calls a large building in Platte County the base of operations for its 12 locations spread across six continents.
Ranking No. 18 on the Kansas City Business Journal’s list of top area private companies by revenue, WireCo plans to create 167 jobs and can receive $8.5 million in tax breaks across 10 years through Kansas’ PEAK Act, which allows businesses adding or keeping jobs in the state to retain as much as 95 percent of eligible employees’ state withholding taxes for as long as 10 years. Most of those are existing jobs moving from Missouri Kansas, although the new Prairie Village building can hold about 185.
The Kansas City Aviation Department had been housing most of those jobs at the Ambassador Building located at 12200 NW Ambassador Drive in Kansas City, Mo. The company posted $822 million in revenue in 2013, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
This marks another event in an ongoing border war for employers in recent years, a back-and-forth that has drawn the ire of Missouri politicians and officials.
The move comes just two months after Dairy Farmers of America announced plans to relocate its global headquarters to a building in Wyandotte County, Kan. from its current office space on North Ambassador Drive. The DFA also received tax incentives and recently reported a 2014 revenue of $17.9 billion according to the Kansas City Business Journal, No. 1 on its list of top private companies.