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GE celebrates The Banks project with Kasich

Howard Wilkinson
/
WVXU

General Electric, a week after it announced it would build its Global Operation Center at The Banks, held a celebration today in their temporary headquarters with Gov. John Kasich and a host of elected officials and community leaders who had a hand in bringing the center to Cincinnati.

Cincinnati City Council and the Hamilton County commissioners approved packages of tax incentives to nail down the deal. Kasich’s private, non-profit development firm, JobsOhio worked for months with GE officials to convince them to bring the operations center here.

It is expected to bring nearly 1,800 jobs with an average payroll of $142 million per year.

GE senior vice president Shane Fitzsimmons told the gathering at the Atrium Two tower in downtown Cincinnati – the temporary headquarters of the operations center – that the cooperation of state and local officials was a key to the deal.

“We’ve worked closely with a number of the stakeholders in this project – the governor, the mayor, Hamilton County leaders – to bring GE’s global operations center to Cincinnati and Ohio,’’ Fitzsimmons said.

Construction on the riverfront office building could begin in the fall and the center is expected to be fully functional by 2017.

Kasich told the group assembled at Atrium Two that the work of state and local officials is not over.

“We’re here to help; this is a partnership,’’ Kasich said. “This is not like, well, you decided and you’re here and we kind of celebrate and move on.”

This, Kasich said, “is a constant process of all of use working together. We have to make sure they have the workers. We have to make sure the workers are producing the way they want.”

The five-year lease includes five five-year renewal options. Over the first 25 years, Cincinnati Public Schools could be allocated approximately $6.8 million in property tax revenues.

Howard Wilkinson is in his 50th year of covering politics on the local, state and national levels.