Wichita-based company plans to expand its footprint with $2.89 million facility
A Wichita-area business plans to expand its footprint with a new $2.89 million facility in northwest Wichita, the Greater Wichita Partnership announced Wednesday.
Advance Catastrophe Technologies plans to relocate from its 11,000-square foot facility being leased in Bel Aire to a new 20,000-square foot facility it’s building in Hoover Industrial Park, near K-96 and Hoover, by early next year. Groundbreaking is scheduled to begin this summer. ACT, which was founded in 2001, specializes in emergency response techniques for businesses affected by disasters.
“I think there is something romantic about keeping it here,” said ACT president and CEO Christian Wiley. “The city has grown and it’s got a lot of dynamic things going on. We would love to continue to be a part of that and show the city’s growth to our employees and clients when they travel to Wichita to see us and our training facility.”
Wiley said the company had a few locations picked out in Texas, but Dan Unruh at InSite Real Estate Group was able to secure ACT staying in Kansas. Wiley said the site’s proximity to the Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport for clients was also a draw.
ACT started to consider needing a new facility last summer, Wiley said.
On June 2, the Wichita City Council is set to discuss an 8-10 year tax abatement based on job growth. Wiley said the abatement percentage isn’t set but based on the idea that the company will add at least one to two new jobs a year over five years.
“Anything the city of Wichita is able to help with . . . abating some of those property taxes just allows us to hire and expand more,” Wiley said.
Wiley said the expected 10 full-time jobs will mostly range in pay from $40,000 to $60,000. The company has about 20 full-time employees already based in the Wichita area, along with more than 20 others at satellite locations around the country.
The new building will partly serve as a national training facility. It will bring employees to Wichita to train in an onsite simulation center on disaster situations “like flooding, smoke damage and mold remediation,” a news release on the project says.
Customers will also be brought into the facility to see how things work. ACT has more than 6,000 customers in the U.S. and Canada, according to the release.
“ACT is a quintessential Wichita story of a home-grown company that now has a national presence and we commend their leadership for their forward-thinking planning and opportunity to work together,” Greater Wichita Partnership president Jeff Fluhr said in the release. “Their growth is exciting as is their commitment to investing in the region’s future and ideas about showcasing our community to people throughout the nation.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 4:35 PM.