By a 10-3 vote the Danville City Council approved, with Alderman Rick Strebing absent, special use petitions already approved by the Danville Planning and Zoning Commission at Wednesday’s meeting. Aldermen Tom Hightower, James Poshard, and Carolyn DeToye voted ‘no.’ The petitions are for a pair of Soltage co-located five mega-watt solar energy facilities, along Lynch Road across from Thyssenkrupp’s location. This would be northeast of Soltage’s about 30 acre solar facility at Voorhees and Michigan near Vicsofan, which came online last fall.
As also mentioned at the March 5th Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, these Soltage projects would both cover 58 acres on 68 acre lots, with a vegetation screen buffer. There would be a total of about 24,000 single access trailer solar panels, none more than eleven feet off the ground. The project is planned to produce electricity for 40 years before being decommissioned. A March 5th presentation by Soltage indicated that over those 40 years, all applicable taxing entities would receive a total of over $2.1 million. Danville District 118 would receive just over $1 million in property tax revenue, with the city receiving over $400,000.
In addition, there are plans for a $950,000 Community Benefit Agreement for the City of Danville. $800,000 of that would be for an Economic Development Fund, and a significant portion of the rest would involve the Fischer Theatre.
There was some stated hesitation on the part of the city because this takes away two of eleven properties in that general region that had long since been set aside as part of an “enterprise zone,” with the city and Vermilion Advantage working together to attract major industrial development to the area; a desire that became even stronger after the recently announced departures of Quaker Oats and Hyster-Yale.
But Aldermen speaking in favor of the project prior to the 10-3 vote, such as Tricia Teague; stated the advantages of…ONE…Soltage had agreed not to take the tax abatement that the enterprise zone had called for, AND TWO….the plan for 40% of the new solar power being sold to Thyssenkrupp will give them major help with the cost of manufacturing their crankshafts. So it really makes no sense, Teague stated, to turn this down; and wait for something else that might never come.
AUDIO: That area has been enterprise zoned for 40 years. If something hasn’t happened in 40 years, the expectation that something is just going to manifest out of clear blue sky seems very unrealistic.
Happy with the vote were Thyssenkrupp’s David Rand; Soltage’s Jonathan Roberts; and Erich Hannah (pictured above L to R), whose family owns the property and have been waiting for a chance to sell for decades.
AUDIO: (Rand) We will use a lot more than the 40%, just because with the amount of work that we do; we’ll still be buying from the grid. But this does a lot to help us to reduce our overall impact. (Roberts) We’ve been working with the Hannah family for eight years, and we’re happy about the vote tonight; and being able to put another project in motion. (Hannah) This is a private project. It’s not a public project. The family has been marketing, one way or the other, for 40 years. So, this is the best deal that we’ve had.
Also passed during the Wednesday City Council meeting were the proposed contracts for the tearing down of the old Studio 25 site at 124 and 128 North Walnut, the old Millikin Dry Cleaners site at 605 and 615 North Vermilion, and the old Downtown Chart Records and D.C. Fitness sites at 125, 129, and 131 North Vermilion; all of which were approved last week by the Public Works Committee. The Council also approved the item passed by Public Works concerning environmental remediation work along the south side of Fairchild, between North Vermilion and Hazel Streets.
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