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Do you know what is going happening on the corner of Muscatine and First Ave. in Iowa City? The two gas stations on that block are being dug up. One of them was my favorite BP station. – Rebecca, Iowa City, via Facebook
If, like Rebecca, you’re fond of that BP, there’s bad news. If, on the other hand, you’re a fan of the other convenience store involved, Kum & Go, the news is somewhat better.
The BP and the Kum & Go will be demolished and replaced with a much bigger Kum & Go, which will straddle both properties and also take up a slice of the neighboring Iowa City Hospice’s parking lot, which the Iowa-based chain of convenience stores purchased from the hospice.
“We expect to open a Marketplace-style store in the first quarter of 2019,” Kristie Bell, director of communications for Kum & Go, told Little Village in an email explaining the chain’s plans for the site.
According to Bell, “Marketplace stores are our larger format stores that feature an open kitchen with a real focus on fresh food, wide aisles, many fueling stations, seating areas, free WiFi & more!”
No matter how wide the aisles are or how many fueling stations the new store has, it’ll never be Kum & Go’s most famous building project. That distinction belongs to the chain’s corporate headquarters, because the company received millions in tax subsidies to build it.
Kum & Go is a successful company — in 2015, the year it was granted the tax breaks for its new headquarters, it had 432 stores in 11 states — and presumably didn’t need the $14.3 million investment tax credit the Iowa Economic Development Authority to break ground on the new building, or the $4.29 million in sales tax rebates on materials purchased for the project. It was also awarded a $20 million property tax rebate from the city of Des Moines.
Throwing tax breaks at already successful companies is standard practice in Iowa. Last year, Apple received $208 million dollars in state and local tax breaks and subsidies to build two data storage centers in Waukee, which the company said would create 50 permanent jobs. Earlier this year, the other Iowa-based chain of convenience store, Casey’s General Stores, received $5.7 million in state and local tax breaks and subsidies to build a 60,000 square foot expansion at its corporate headquarters in Ankeny.
Well, gosh. What else would we do with that $40 million? Improve school funding? Help with mental health care? Improve a bit of infrastructure? Improve access to healthcare for the 105,000 Iowa kids living in poverty? Nah. Let’s give to to fat cats. That the Ioway.
Iowa persists in shelling out tax breaks/bribery to private corporations. I guess we think so poorly of ourselves that we think our corporate citizens will abandon us for something more coastal.
It’s Muscatine Ave, not Lower Muscatine.
Has anyone noticed that States always have more $ for the rich, while cutting programs for everyone else?
Its’ called addition by subtraction.
Politicians only want to be friends to the rich, inspite of what they say prior to elections.
“Read my lips – no new taxes” – G.H.W. Bush
LOL
But hyvee is across the street….so why do we need this type of market/gas station..???? A hyvee gas would’ve been a better fit. That’s just an enormous space for one gas station in general.