COMIDA, the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency on Tuesday approved incentives for several projects including the re-development of the Bausch and Lomb building downtown. Local developers who include Larry Glazer, Robert Morgan and David Flaum recently announced they are buying that building for $15 million. After B+L was purchased by Valeant Pharmaceuticals, most of the local operations were moved to their facility on Goodman Street.
Glazer and his partners requested a payment-in-lieu-of taxes deal that will see them pay about $21 million over a 20 year period. Glazer says they need that incentive to make improvements to the building and also attract more tenants.
“The cost to get this building under control in terms of operating costs, in terms of taxes, have to be spread out over a long period of time in order to get tenants to come into the building and stay there .“
Del Smith, Rochester’s Commissioner of Neighborhood and Business Development also came to the meeting to speak in support of the project.
“It is very important that we have a very vibrant downtown, it is very important that we do everything that we can from the city to see to that downtown is successful and is growing, because the impacts extend outside of just downtown, but the entire city and I would dare say, the entire region .“
COMIDA approved the incentive for that project which is expected to create at least 65 jobs.
The agency also approved incentives for some other projects including construction of a new building that will house the local company Pictometry in Henrietta, which anticipates creating 20 jobs, and another project involving new space for Isaac Heating and Cooling. That project is also expected to create at least 20 jobs.
