Islip grants $1.6M in tax breaks for HVAC products supplier F.W. Webb Co. warehouse

Islip Town is giving $1.6 million in tax breaks to help a company renovate an empty warehouse in Central Islip, where the owner plans to create at least 40 new jobs selling industrial supplies. 

The roughly 143,000-square-foot warehouse is at 31 Windsor Place, just across Veterans Memorial Highway from Islandia. It previously housed a paper distributor but has been empty in recent years, according to John Walser, the executive director of Islip’s Industrial Development Agency, or IDA.

Massachusetts-based F.W. Webb Co. bought the site earlier this year for about $29 million. The company is a wholesale distributor of plumbing, industrial, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning supplies that sells to contractor firms and industrial accounts, according to F.W. Webb’s chief operating officer, Bob Mucciarone. 

The company already has locations on Long Island, but Mucciarone said the new Central Islip site will be a central hub to serve contractors Islandwide.

“It’s going to be good for the community and I think it’s going to be good for the contractors out on Long Island,” he told Newsday. 

F.W. Webb plans to invest about $5 million in renovations to overhaul the site into “a small self-serve and a warehouse distribution facility. And we’re going to serve all of Long Island," Mucciarone said.

He said F.W. Webb’s customers include "plumbing contractors, one- or two-man bands, or they can be big mechanical contractors that do big jobs."

Mucciarone said he expects the site to open in February or March.

Islip’s IDA Board, which is composed of the same elected officials who sit on the town board, is tasked with approving tax breaks to incentivize developers whose projects can boost property values and spur job creation.

The board voted 5-0 on Sept. 16 to grant F.W. Webb roughly $210,000 in sales tax exemptions, as well as a discount on its property taxes over the next 14 years. The company will make payments based on a portion of its property's value, in lieu of paying a regular tax bill, which will save it another $1.2 million in total.

“It’s a company coming in, making a capital investment and bringing jobs to the area,” Walser told Newsday. He estimated F.W. Webb’s private investment in the project to be roughly $35 million.

Mucciarone said the IDA deal “makes it more feasible for us to do the project. It’s a significant expenditure. And we’re bringing in … 40 jobs. So, it made sense to do this — both for us and for the town."

Those jobs will include “truck drivers, warehouse people, counter people, inside salespeople, administration people, outside salespeople,” according to Mucciarone.

Islip’s IDA can claw back its subsidies if F.W. Webb fails to create the 40 jobs it promised within two years after construction finishes, according to Walser.

Mucciarone said F.W. Webb will “absolutely” hit that mark, adding that he expects the company to eventually create more than its promised 40 jobs.

By Sam Kmack

sam.kmack@newsday.com

Sam Kmack covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and previously worked as a city watchdog reporter in the Phoenix metro area, as well as an investigative journalist at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.