Council Considers Plan to Prevent Avon From Closing Facility

The City Council will consider an agreement Monday which would reimburse Avon Products, Inc. up to $600,000 a year in an effort to prevent Avon from closing its Foothill Blvd. facility and firing the workers.

The proposed Sales Tax Increment Reimbursement Agreement would reimburse Avon up to 40% of the sales tax generated by Avon after July 1, 2014.

The item description on the Council’s agenda explains “that is the date on which Avon’s operation would have been shut down and the sales tax generated would have been $0, if not for this Agreement.”

According to the agenda, the proposed reimbursement agreement limits the payout to no more than $600,000 in any one year and will not continue after $1.8 million is reimbursed or three years have passed, whichever comes first.

Last January Avon spokeswoman Jennifer Dwyer Vargas announced that Avon planned to close the local facility, a long-standing landmark in Pasadena. The 353,000-square-foot location at 2940 E. Foothill Blvd. is the company’s oldest distribution center in America, having opened in 1946.

Vargas said at the time that its 170 employees would probably be without a job sometime in 2014.

The action recommended by City Manager Michael Beck before the Council on Monday asks the Council to find that the sales tax reimbursement would preserve local jobs and contribute to the city’s economic base and to authorize Beck to execute the agreement.

The Council meets Monday, Oct. 7 at City Hall. The public portion begins at 7 p.m.