Update: Hostess Brands getting $1 million in cash from development authority, city | Business | Columbus Ledger Enquirer

A cash incentive of $1 million was what it took to land Hostess Brands LLC and a projected 400 jobs after the Victory Drive plant in Columbus was bought out of U.S. bankruptcy court earlier this year.

Dick Ellis, chairman of the Development Authority of Columbus, said in an Aug. 21 letter to Mayor Teresa Tomlinson that the authority paid Hostess $500,000 on June 19.

The city, in turn, is expected to pay Hostess $250,000 in June 2014 and the same amount in June 2015, money that goes to help offset the $18 million the snack-food company said it would cost to reopen the Columbus bakery in May for the eventual July 1 startup of Twinkies and Zingers production.

“I would appreciate your response acknowledging this payment schedule,” Ellis said in the letter to the mayor, with the subject expected to be on Columbus Council’s agenda Tuesday.

Ellis on Monday said the incentives offered to Hostess Brands and other existing or potential employers are aimed at making certain the city has a chance at landing the business and jobs that come with it.

“We’re constantly in competition, as we were for this Hostess operation to come back to Columbus,” he said. “There were multiple plants that were involved in that bankruptcy, and a bunch of them did not reopen as a result of the bankruptcy when they came out.”

To be exact, there were 11 bakeries shut down last November after previous owner, Dallas-based Hostess Brands Inc., decided it could no longer negotiate with unions over worker pay and benefits, which had been steadily eroding amid multiple bankruptcies.

via Update: Hostess Brands getting $1 million in cash from development authority, city | Business | Columbus Ledger Enquirer.