A deal has been struck to renew a major corporate incentive program that will help lure jobs to lower Manhattan from outside the city, The Post has learned.
The Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, known as REAP, will provide companies with $3,000 per job for 12 years if they come to downtown from outside the city.
The REAP program, which expired at the end of June, had fallen victim to a dispute between state and city officials over whether the program should apply to firms relocating jobs to the outer boroughs.
Under the new deal on the REAP program, companies that bring jobs into lower Manhattan will be considered eligible for the program, but companies that want to leave lower Manhattan to put jobs in the outer boroughs and obtain REAP benefits will have to win approval of the city’s Industrial Development Agency.
Cantor Fitzgerald, which is close to finalizing a deal to obtain a city and state benefit package worth about $10 million to return to lower Manhattan, will not be eligible for the REAP benefits, as some officials had wanted.
But Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) was instrumental in helping the company obtain a separate benefit package.
Silver said of the new REAP program, “We will be able to for the first time market to firms in Jersey and Pennsylvania or Westchester and fight back with benefits that are as-of-right for moving to downtown Manhattan.”
The law renewing the program is expected to be approved by the Legislature early next year.
