SPARTANBURG, S.C.—Carolina Foothills Federal Credit Union will receive an infrastructure tax credit that will cut its property tax bill in half for 10 years—an estimated savings of about $43,000 annually—as part of a plan to establish a new headquarters in Spartanburg.
The Spartanburg County Council approved the incentive on April 20, according to reporting by The Post and Courier.
In exchange, the credit union plans to invest $6 million to renovate an existing building at 1450 John B. White Sr. Blvd. into its new headquarters and build a new branch at 520 N. Church St., a site it previously occupied before a fire in November, according to the report.
Councilmember Paul Abbott said the headquarters component added weight to the proposal.
“(It’s) not just they’re building a branch, they’re establishing their corporate headquarters, as I understand,” Abbott said, according to The Post and Courier. “That gave it a little more weight on my end.”
‘High-Dollar Employees’
Board Chair Isaac Dickson said the move will shift higher-paid employees from another office into Spartanburg.
“We had an office over in Greenville. That’s where the high-dollar employees were,” Dickson said, according to The Post and Courier. “Those are the ones we’re moving over to Spartanburg now.”
City records cited by the newspaper show the credit union plans to relocate 17 jobs to the new headquarters and create at least three additional positions, with an average salary of $97,000.
Dickson said the tax incentive will allow the institution to reinvest more into the community.
“If we had to pay that money out in taxes, it’s less money we’ve got to invest back in the community,” he said, according to The Post and Courier. “You do what works best for the bottom line. We’re looking for ways we can maximize our income, our revenue, because what we want to do is be able to invest back into the communities we serve.”
Many Low-Income Members
The credit union, founded in 1960 by the Spartanburg Post Office, serves more than 18,000 members across Greenville, Spartanburg and Cherokee counties, many of whom are low-income, the newspaper reported. It offers products including mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and checking accounts, and participates in the county’s PowerUp Spartanburg program supporting small and minority-owned businesses.
The incentive drew criticism during public comment. Mike Stacy, a candidate for Spartanburg County Council chair, questioned the tax break for an institution with nearly $218 million in assets.
“Every dollar that is not collected from a large and profitable company is a dollar that must be made up elsewhere, which is often by people and small businesses who do not have the same ability to negotiate tax relief,” Stacy said, according to The Post and Courier.
The newspaper reported that Stacy also claimed the credit union had donated $1.65 million to the OneSpartanburg Foundation in 2023. However, tax records show the foundation provided that funding to the credit union as part of the PowerUp Spartanburg initiative, a detail confirmed by the organization, the Post & Standard said.
Reason for FILOTs
Councilmember Monier Abusaft defended the incentive, citing the credit union’s role in expanding access to capital.
“Treating Carolina Foothills like you would treat a Bank of America or something like that just demonstrates why we have FILOTs,” Abusaft said, according to The Post and Courier.
County officials said the incentive is an infrastructure tax credit, not a fee-in-lieu-of-tax agreement, and is layered on top of the credit union’s existing 6% property tax assessment ratio, the newspaper reported.
