By Brian Bandell (South Florida Business Journal) -- Miami-Dade County commissioners approved a motion to ask Florida for $150,000 more in job growth incentives for Becton Dickinson and Co., which has already secured $1.36 million in incentives to open a Miami facility. On Thursday, the commissioners voted to forgo a local match and ask the state to award the Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based biotechnology firm $150,000 to create 75 jobs and spend $21.1 million in capital improvements under the Brownfield Redevelopment program. Although the former Ivax Corp. site -- at 50 N.W. 176th St. -- that Becton Dickinson purchased wasn’t contaminated or in a Brownfield, the commission also redrew the Brownfield map on Thursday to add that site, along with some other properties.
Becton Dickinson purchased the old Ivax Corp. manufacturing site in Miami in August through a special warrantee deed -- a sale of a holding company in control of the site in a deal that greatly reduces state and local property transaction fees.
The property has 253,066 square feet of warehouse/manufacturing facilities. Becton Dickinson (NYSE: BDX) granted Ivax a 10-year lease for 112,000 square feet of that property on Aug. 31.
According to a May application submitted by the Beacon Council, which listed the company as confidential, the new biotech company would renovate 90,000 square feet and buy equipment to manufacture cell culture products that are used to make cell-based therapeutics and vaccines for other biotech companies. Construction would begin in July.
The leftover space is to be reserved for possible future expansion.
