Frito-Lay has been in Topeka 70 years, not since the big plant on I-470. The current factory is the second Topeka home, built after a tornado. The tax breaks that show up in the public record are almost all on later expansions, not a documented 1971 “welcome package” with a dollar figure attached.
When they came
1956 — first plant.
Frito-Lay opened at S.E. 6th and Kansas Avenue. That is the same east-side industrial corridor where Reser’s later sat. Employment when a longtime worker started in 1970 was only about 43 people.
June 8, 1966 — tornado.
The 1966 Topeka tornado destroyed that building. The company ran a temporary plant in Pauline (south of the city, near what is now the Forbes / Topeka Regional Airport area) while it rebuilt.
August 30, 1971 — current plant opens.
The south Topeka factory at 4236 S.W. Kirklawn (just south of I-470, west of Topeka Boulevard; same campus often listed as 1303 S.W. 41st) opened that day. PepsiCo’s own 1971 annual report lists “a new Topeka, Kansas, plant” for Cheetos, Doritos, Funyuns, and Munchos. It started around 100 workers. The site was chosen for turnpike / I-470 truck access and a Kansas workforce, not because Topeka was a potato district — potatoes and corn still roll in from Nebraska.
So: in Topeka since 1956; at the plant everyone drives past since August 30, 1971. That is the date the company itself used for the 40-year party in 2011.
What they were given (what is actually in the record)
Kansas does not publish one tidy “Frito-Lay incentive file” from 1956. What is public is ordinance-level and newspaper-level, plus later county exemption hearings. Here is what holds up.
1956 and 1971 — original location and rebuild
I did not find a digitized City of Topeka or Shawnee County packet that lists IRBs, a cash grant, or a named property-tax abatement for the 1956 shop or the 1971 Kirklawn plant. Kansas already had industrial revenue bond authority (K.S.A. 12-1740 et seq., 1961), so a 1971 bond deal is possible. It is not in the online archives the way 2009 and 2018 are.
What the company and state later said about why Topeka: interstate access, labor, and a “business-friendly” state. After the tornado they already had people and a market; they rebuilt here instead of leaving. That is a location decision, not a published subsidy spreadsheet.
Treat 1971 incentives as not documented in the sources below, not as “they got nothing.”
2007–2011 — the era that is documented
From 2007 on the plant was in almost continuous expansion: about 75,000 sq. ft. in 2007, 125,000 in 2009, a $53 million high-rise automated warehouse around 2010, biomass boiler, SunChips / Tostitos lines. Roof area was described in that period as heading toward 800,000 sq. ft. on roughly 188 acres.
June 2009 — 10-year county property-tax break on the addition.
Shawnee County agreed to a 10-year exemption from property tax on the new work: biomass boiler, Tostitos Scoops line, and a 30,000-square-foot warehouse. Go Topeka’s Steve Jenkins announced it. Important detail from the Capital-Journal: Go Topeka did not put countywide economic-development sales-tax cash into the deal. The incentive was the county tax exemption on the new property, framed as job retention for 800-plus workers, not a big new hiring pledge.
Frito-Lay’s own plant engineer, Allen Moore, later told Site Selection the state helped with “standard tax abatements and other incentives” and that “GO Topeka, the city and county were all very good to work with.” That is the company describing the 2007–2011 wave, not a 1971 ordinance.
Federal piece on the boiler: DOE put about $1.66 million into a ~$13 million biomass energy project at the Topeka plant (wood waste, including city yard waste from I-70 and MacVicar). That is a federal cost-share, not a city check.
Stacked exemptions. In January 2018 the county commission’s agenda included renewing year 8 and year 9 of separate Frito-Lay projects. That means at least two 10-year economic-development exemptions were running at once, consistent with a 2009 deal and a follow-on ~2010 warehouse deal.
August 13, 2018 — warehouse EDX
County commission approved an economic development property-tax exemption for an 86,000-square-foot hi-tech warehouse on land west of the plant (bought from the Graeme W. Henderson Trust; city rezoned/platted it as Frito-Lay Subdivision No. 3 / PUD so they could go taller than the old 70-foot I-1 cap, up to 125 feet).
What the hearing actually said:
- Exemption is on new value, not the existing factory. County counselor Jim Crowl: existing plant stays on the tax roll.
- Jobs pledged: 7 new, 6 retained on that project — small next to an 800–1,000 person plant.
- Staff cost-benefit: about $1.03 million to the city and $166,000 to the county over 10 years, “net benefit” ~$1.2 million. That is their model, not an audited check.
- Context numbers in the packet: land/buildings around the site appraised about $9.3 million; 2018 tax on that existing property about $380,471. That was the old tax, not the abated amount.
- Public objection: resident Marge Ahrens said Auburn-Washburn USD 437 had already lost on the order of $2.5 million county / $2 million city from exemption subsidies in 2017. Commissioner Kevin Cook called the Frito deal “an investment now, to have a much larger investment in the future.”
The 2018 file also allowed a payment in lieu of taxes if the county wanted one. The published stories do not print the PILOT schedule.
What they generally did not get (in the clips)
- No JEDO cash grant on the scale of Reser’s later $1 million (2025) or Reser’s huge EDX face amount. Frito-Lay’s public deals are property-tax exemptions on increments, plus state “standard” abatements, plus a DOE boiler grant.
- No evidence in these sources of a free water rate or a special industrial water contract. They sit on the city’s published Industrial / Industrial II class like everyone else in that class.
- Go Topeka cash from the countywide ED sales tax: specifically declined in 2009.
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