Sandwich Mayor reacts to Gjovik Ford move to Plano

Sandwich Mayor Rick Olson said he learned about two weeks ago that the owners of the Gjovik Ford dealership in Sandwich were planning a move to Plano.

Olson said Tom and Scott Gjovik, owner and president of the dealership, respectively, alerted him that they planned to move the dealership to Plano, but asked that he not talk about it at that time. It was not a scheduled meeting, Olson said.

“Then last week, [Plano Mayor] Bob Hausler spoke about it so I didn’t think it was a secret anymore,” Olson said after Monday evening’s Sandwich City Council meeting.

“I’m very disappointed. We tried to come up with a proposal that made sense. It’s strictly business,” he said.

Olson acknowledged the ground and soil borings (for the new Ford facility in Sandwich) were not the best.

“That made it difficult for them to build there,” he added.

“I got a call asking if we were going to have another offer. I said we cannot even come close to that,” Olson said, referring to the offer Plano made to Gjovik.

“The opportunity to get a 90 percent sales tax rebate is unbelievable,” he said, referring to the agreement with Gjovik the Plano City Council voted unanimously Monday evening to approve.

Olson noted the agreement the Sandwich City Council approved for Gjovik last year set a ceiling of $800,000 in sales tax rebates that the city would have reimbursed to Gjovik.

He also said that the Sandwich Council’s original vote to come up with $800,000 in rebates was not approved by 100 percent of the council. The vote to approve the agreement was 4-2.

“We could have negotiated higher, but the votes were not there, so I knew it would not make sense to revisit it. That’s just a fact of life,” he said.

Olson said Gjovik had been the top sales tax contributor to the city for a number of years. Sandwich will not lose any sales tax until the dealership opens in Plano.

Olson said Jim Teckenbrock, executive director of the Sandwich Economic Development Corporation, will be working with Sandwich to help find new businesses for the city.

“Every organization looking to come here will want to know what they can get [from the city],” the mayor added.

He noted that when Walgreen’s came to Sandwich, it was an easy move. They moved into a site occupied by a former church that did not pay sales or real estate taxes.

“So it was simple to give them a sales tax incentive. It will be a challenge to find new businesses for the city, but we need to move forward,” he said.