The Benton County Board of Commissioners and the Corvallis City Council will meet jointly on Thursday, June 3, at 5:30 pm in the Downtown Fire Station Meeting Room at 400 NW Harrison Boulevard to further discuss the proposed Enterprise Zone expansion. A copy of the electronic meeting packet which includes maps is available.

There is currently one Enterprize Zone in South Corvallis (see below for more information). The City and County are seeking to add two areas (Hewlett Packard campus and Sunset Research Park) to the Zone. The boundary change request will be submitted to Business Oregon (Oregon Economic and Community Development Department) for approval. The proposed areas to be added to the Zone include relevant tax codes, such that the zones could affect future property tax collections in the area. An enterprise zone exempts only new property that a job-creating business might build or install in the enterprise zone at some future time. Also, an enterprise zone exemption is temporary, usually lasting only three years, after which the property induced by these incentives is available for assessment. An extension to four or five years in total is possible in some cases. For rather exceptional investments, longer-term incentives might be available in a rural enterprise zone, but only if Benton County meets certain economic criteria; these longer-term incentives also may include a state tax credit, which triggers annual payments to local taxing districts by the state government. Both the extension and the long-term incentives need approval from the City of Corvallis and Benton County, which sponsor the Benton/Corvallis Enterprise Zone. Finally, none of these property tax exemptions would be available to just any business. Most commercial or retail operations would not be eligible. Rather, the primary beneficiaries of enterprise zone benefits are manufacturing or other more-industrially oriented facilities serving other businesses.

SOUTH CORVALLIS ENTERPRISE ZONE

The current Enterprise Zone is located in South Corvallis. The City has contracted with the Corvallis-Benton Chamber Coalition to manage the project. Following are links to South Corvallis zone map and application.

South Corvallis Enterprise Zone Map

Application for Enterprise Zone Designation

For more information about the Enterprise Zone, please call Mayor Tomlinson at 541-766-6985.