Mystery solved: Medtronic eyes Phillips 66 land for 3,000 jobs

LOUISVILLE — Medtronic Inc. has been identified as the company eyeing the Phillips 66 land in Louisville for a new corporate campus that could eventually employ 3,000 workers.

The revelation came in materials distributed for the Louisville city council’s Oct. 15 meeting, when council members will consider whether to provide almost $1.5 million in incentives for the proposed development.

The project also matches descriptions of “Project Charlie Brown,” which the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved for a $24.8 million incentive package in August.

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Medical-device maker Medtronic, based in Dublin with U.S. headquarters in Minneapolis, employs 84,000 people worldwide.

Medtronic would invest $133 million in a 450,000- to 500,000-square-foot corporate campus on 90 to 100 acres on the Phillips 66 property, a 430-acre property located at U.S. Highway 36 and Northwest Parkway. Construction would cost $95 million, with tenant improvements adding $23 million, and furniture, fixtures and equipment adding another $15 million.

Medtronic employs about 2,000 workers in Colorado, including 500 elsewhere in Louisville. The company also has operations in Boulder, Denver and Parker.

“The Company is planning a relocation and expansion of some of the Company’s business within the State of Colorado,” according to documents submitted by city staff to Louisville council members, noting that Medtronic workers would earn “significantly higher than the Boulder County average wage at $100,000 to $150,000.”

The document states that multiple states are currently being reviewed by the company, including Minnesota and Tennessee.

Medtronic’s arrival would mean big job gains for Louisville, according to the documents.

“The Company has a significant footprint in the Metro Denver region already that supports 2,000 existing Colorado jobs,” the document states. “ … The projected number of employees within the first five years of operation on the Louisville site is estimated to increase to 3,000 or more.”

Construction would be accomplished in three phases, with the initial phase beginning in 2020 and the final phase completed in June to October of 2022.

Louisville’s incentive package would total $1,457,700 and would include: 

• Building-permit-fee rebates of $392,700.
• Building-use-tax rebate of $885,000.
• Consumer-use/sales-tax rebate of $180,000.

Project Charlie Brown was referred to at the August Colorado Economic Development Commission meeting as a publicly traded, “global Fortune 500 bioscience company providing innovative health-care solutions through research and development, commercialization and integration with health-care providers.” That description matches Medtronic.

The project was estimated to create 1,000 jobs, with $95 million in exterior building construction investments, $23 million in tenant improvements and $15 million in equipment, matching exactly what was described to Louisville city council members.

Michelle Hadwiger, director of global business development for the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, submitted a letter to Louisville council members on Oct. 7 supporting the local incentive.

“This Project supports the state’s economic goals for several reasons,” she wrote. “The Project would have the potential for significant economic spinoff, as the company is a prestigious Fortune 500 company considering expanding their footprint in the selected state, adding a large amount of high-paying jobs, and providing a substantial amount of capital expenditure. Second, the company is committed to implementing skills-based hiring and training practices. Third, the Project highlights Colorado’s continuing strength in R&D and innovation-based sectors.

“Again,  it is my sincere hope that we do all that we can to secure this Project for Louisville and Colorado.”

The Phillips 66 property formerly housed the corporate headquarters for Storage Technology Corp. and has lain dormant for years. StorageTek sold to Sun Microsystems Inc. in 2005 for $4.1 billion., and those workers eventually were moved to Sun’s Broomfield campus. Sun was acquired by Oracle Corp. in 2010.

In 2008, Sun sold the 430-acre property to ConocoPhillips for $55.6 million. The energy company announced plans to build a clean-energy research campus that would eventually create 7,000 jobs. But the subsequent spinoff of Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) from ConocoPhillips brought an end to those plans, and the property was put on the market.

The land was one of the sites submitted by the state of Colorado as a potential location for the Amazon HQ2 project, with the land under contract to Bancroft Capital. That deal never materialized.

Brue Baukol Capital Partners, a Denver-based real estate investment and development firm, submitted documents to the city of Louisville in late June to transform the acreage into a mixed-use development that would include 3.4 million square feet, including a 1,500-unit senior-living and transition-care facility, along with office, retail and hotel uses.

Key to the filing was a 500,000-square-foot corporate campus that would employ approximately 2,500 employees.