In exciting news for businesses located in West Berkeley, the Oakland City Council has announced that they have approved the expansion of the region’s enterprise zone to cover West Berkely, and the over 1,000 businesses that operate out of the city.

The Berkeley Daily Planet reports, “Berkeley’s primary motivation to pass the proposal was to keep Bayer Healthcare, the city’s largest private-sector employer, from leaving town. The company had threatened to outsource some of its manufacturing, a move city officials feared would lead to the pharmaceutical giant eventually shutting down its Aquatic Park campus entirely. As a result, Berkeley agreed to give Bayer $10 million in tax breaks for over two years, including a reduction in PG&E bills, as part of the enterprise zone, in return for which the company will remain in Berkeley and invest $100 million in the facility.”

This is exciting since it could help to bring new businesses into the area, and will help to offset the high cost of living in the area.

Tags: bayer, Oakland enterprise zone, west berkeley

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 4:07 am and is filed under Featured Zone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.