Mason City council approves development agreement for golf car, electric vehicle manufacturing facility

MASON CITY — The City Council in Mason City last night approved a development agreement between the city and the company transforming the former ShopKo building into a golf car and electric vehicle manufacturing facility.

EVCO Holdings LLC in September announced they were intending to purchase the former box store building for its new manufacturing and assembly project, with the company intending to create up to 100 jobs over its first five years. EVCO is a new company that will create various product lines in the burgeoning recreational electric vehicle market, which will include Streetrod Golf Cars and various electric vehicle-based products and components. N

orth Iowa Corridor Economic Development Corporation CEO Chad Schreck thanked the city for their work on the project.   “We’re really excited about it. We’ve had the opportunity to work with them from the time they started considering North Iowa and really pleased with what we’ve come up with. I think this is a great repurpose, reuse of the ShopKo facility in an important corridor of our community, and just really a future forward type company doing some really cool this in the electric vehicle space and the recreational vehicles have a great local partner with Pritchard’s that they service and will provide product lines for among many others potentially coming up in the future.”

Schreck says the first phase of improvements to the building is anticipated to be done by March 31st of this year.   “They are trying to be as aggressive as they can. Obviously that’s very aggressive, but they’ve been saying from the start they’re going to push as fast as they could. I hope so, of course if there’s anything that comes up, there may have to be some discussion there.”

The agreement would provide a 100% incremental tax rebate on the estimated increased value of the property for the next ten years, with a maximum rebate of $320,000. EVCO must complete approximately $1.5 million in renovations to the property, including 15,000 square feet for a showroom and facility improvements to create assembly lines. The agreement anticipates an increase of $1 million in the assessed value of the property.

The agreement requires EVCO to create a minimum of 80 full-time jobs, with the incremental tax rebate for that year being reduced by the same percentage as the actual employment if it’s less than 80.