Governor Jared Polis confirmed on Thursday that ACCO Engineered Systems will spend $36 million turning an existing Monument building into a fabrication plant, creating up to 135 jobs at an average wage a third above the county average. The town beat Peoria, Arizona, for the plant by assembling the first economic incentive package in its history: $453,060 in rebated future taxes, alongside roughly $1 million in state support. The deal is done. Much of the detail — the site, the schedule, the terms the town negotiated — is still to come.
Small towns rarely get to compete for factories. Monument, a town of about 13,800 that has more than doubled in size since 2010, has never done it before. On Thursday it won one, over Peoria, Arizona, where ACCO already runs a 93,000-square-foot fabrication plant.
The company is a mechanical contractor rather than a manufacturer in the ordinary sense. It designs, fabricates and installs the systems inside large buildings — heating and cooling, plumbing, process piping, refrigeration, building automation. It is employee-owned, based in California, employs about 6,500 people and already has 285 of them in Colorado, including a fabrication shop in Colorado Springs.
“Our move to Monument is a significant step forward for our growth in the Colorado market,” said Dan Gudmunson, an ACCO project executive. “The added capacity we gain with this shop and the jobs it will create will allow us to provide our best-in-class fabrication and installation capabilities to more customers throughout Colorado and the surrounding states.”
Nothing is being built from the ground up. Mayor Pro Tem Steve King said ACCO is taking over one of the town’s empty warehouses rather than putting up a new plant, and that the company’s sign is already on the building. The $36 million is the cost of outfitting it. The building is at 15240 Terrazzo Drive, east of the UPS facility and south of the QuikTrip on Baptist Road; neither the state nor the town named the site in Thursday’s announcement.
The Price
Three governments are contributing, and Monument’s share is the smallest.
The deal, in numbers
Net new jobs: up to 135
Average annual wage: $87,037 — 133% of the El Paso County average of $65,338
State, Strategic Fund Job Growth Incentive: up to $453,000 over five years, at $3,356 per job
State Enterprise Zone credits and exemptions: up to $585,800, estimated by El Paso County, which administers the program
Town of Monument: up to $453,060, tied to verified new full-time jobs
Total public support: roughly $1.49 million, of which about $1.04 million is state money
Monument’s $453,060 is not a check. It is a rebate of taxes the project itself will generate: about $243,000 in property-tax rebates running from 2026 to 2034, and roughly $210,000 in use-tax rebates calculated on what is actually collected in 2026 and 2027. If the project does not go ahead, the town pays nothing. As the Gazette put it when the council first approved the package, the incentives “involve no outlay of funds, just a refund of a portion of future funds that would be paid by ACCO.”
How Monument Won It
The town was approached in June 2025 by the state’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade and by the Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC, which were shopping a project they called Cobalt. Monument staff spent five months assembling an offer with the state, El Paso County and the Tri-Lakes and Colorado Springs chambers.
The council took it up at a special meeting on October 29, against a state deadline two days later, and agreed to sign a letter of commitment. It was a lean year to be offering anything: sales-tax revenue was running 11% below the previous year, and the finance director had presented a draft 2026 budget with no room for replacing aging vehicles, adding staff or matching grants. Councilmember Marco Fiorito called the package “an honest and realistic proposal from us of what we can do today.” Councilmember Laura Kronick raised the optics of offering incentives in a tight year, and Mayor Pro Tem Steve King the question of precedent.
The state made room too. Its Strategic Fund normally expects a local match that keeps pace with the five-year state payout; Monument’s runs ten years. Staff asked the Economic Development Commission to allow the longer term because Monument “is a smaller community that has not previously participated in state recruitment activities,” and the commission agreed — spreading the town’s obligation across twice the term the state carries.
Still to Come
Resolution 27-2026, the economic-development agreement itself, was approved on April 6 after the council returned from executive session. It has not yet been published.
The state’s award is contingent: 135 jobs at a minimum average wage of $71,872, falling to a reduced $3,000-per-job rate if the average lands between $65,338 and that figure, with jobs maintained a full year before anything is paid.
The job count has moved once. The project the town was pitched in June 2025 involved $36.3 million and approximately 170 jobs paying $75,000 to $95,000. By the state’s November review it was 135 jobs at $87,037 — early recruitment figures being estimates, while the state’s number is an enforceable floor a company has to be willing to sign for.
A Line Worth Watching
The part of this that may matter most locally is not in the announcement at all.
When ACCO was still choosing between Monument and Peoria, it wrote to the council about what it wanted to bring beyond payroll:
“We would be very interested in sponsoring and partnering with local schools and in particular, the Lewis-Palmer Career and Innovation Center. We believe this could create a mutually beneficial relationship by providing direct access to talent trained in relevant technical skills.”
The company also offered internships and apprenticeships, and said it wanted to be “an active, long-term partner in the community.”
It is a natural fit. The Career & Innovation Center opened in August 2025 on Synthes Avenue in Monument, and its programs run to welding, advanced manufacturing and construction — close to a list of what a mechanical-fabrication shop hires for. A center a few miles from the plant is about as short a path from classroom to skilled trade as a district is likely to get, and ACCO has an obvious interest in building one. How far that partnership has progressed since April is a question for the district and the company, and one worth following.
What Comes Next
“ACCO Engineered Systems’ expansion is an exciting milestone for Monument and one we competed hard for,” Mayor Mitch LaKind said on Thursday. “This was the first time the Town has put together a local economic incentive package, so being chosen over the competition means a great deal.”
Monument’s recent commercial approvals have run to warehouses and a mixed-use business park. A hundred and thirty-five skilled jobs at $87,037, from an established employee-owned employer already operating up the interstate in Colorado Springs, is a different kind of addition. The schedule and the terms of the agreement will follow. The jobs are the part that is settled.
Correction, July 30, 2026: An earlier version of this article said ACCO would build a fabrication plant in Monument. The company is outfitting an existing building rather than constructing a new one, and the $36 million capital investment covers that work. Mayor Pro Tem Steve King said the company’s sign is already on the building, and has since identified it as 15240 Terrazzo Drive.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Monument Town Survey: What the Words Are Worth, on the town’s move to put a use-tax increase on the November ballot · Monument Town Council, July 20, 2026, on paid lake parking and the data-center freeze
The announcement: OEDIT press release, July 30, 2026 · Colorado Springs Chamber & EDC · Colorado Springs Gazette, July 30, 2026 · KKTV, July 30, 2026
State record: Colorado Economic Development Commission, November 2025 approvals — Project Cobalt · Strategic Fund Job Growth Incentive · Enterprise Zone Program
The October 2025 decision: Colorado Springs Gazette, October 31, 2025 · Our Community News, December 2025 — Monument Town Council, Oct. 29 and Nov. 3 and 17 · Colorado Springs Gazette, November 20, 2025
Resolution 27-2026: Our Community News — Monument Town Council, April 6 and 20, 2026
Census record: U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts, Monument town, Colorado
Entities: ACCO fabrication facilities · ACCO Colorado Springs · ACCO employee stock ownership plan · Lewis-Palmer Career & Innovation Center · Town of Monument
Methodology
Job, wage and incentive figures come from the Colorado Economic Development Commission’s November 2025 project posting and the Office of Economic Development and International Trade’s July 30, 2026 press release, rather than from secondary coverage of either. The El Paso County average annual wage of $65,338 is derived from the state’s statement that $87,037 represents 133% of it and from the incentive’s stated 100%-of-county floor. The town’s rebate components — $243,000 in property tax across 2026–34 and roughly $210,000 in use tax on 2026–27 collections — come from contemporaneous reporting of the October 29, 2025 special meeting by the Gazette and Our Community News; the Independent has not seen the letter of commitment.
The Independent has not obtained Resolution 27-2026 or its underlying economic-development agreement, and no claim in this article should be read as a description of that document’s terms.
Figures describing the town’s 2025 budget position — the 11% year-over-year decline in sales-tax revenue and the unfunded items in the draft 2026 budget — are drawn from Finance Director Jennifer Phillips’s presentations to the council as reported at the time, and describe the autumn of 2025; the Independent has not assessed Monument’s finances as of July 2026. The town’s population is the U.S. Census Bureau’s July 1, 2025 estimate of 13,813; the 2020 census counted 10,399 and the 2010 census 5,530. Where published sources conflict, both are reported.
Where is to be built in Monument, the last year all we heard was “Kill Buckie’s”
How did this fly under the Radar and not get reported
Fair question, and the answer is a little anticlimactic.
The address is 15240 Terrazzo Drive. It’s on the card at the top of the article, in the fifth paragraph, and on the map immediately below that.
As for the radar: Buc-ee’s is 31 acres of new construction — 74,000 square feet, 120 fueling positions, 812 parking spaces, and by the company’s own traffic filings 22,150 vehicle trips a day — on land whose zoning doesn’t obviously allow it. That’s why the county’s planning director declined to classify it, why the company appealed, and why it has occupied a year of hearings. ACCO is moving into a building that already exists, in a spot already zoned for exactly this. Its traffic impact is 135 people driving to work. No rezoning, no use determination, no hearing. There is nothing to show up to.
It also wasn’t unreported. The town approved the incentive at a public special meeting on October 29, the state’s Economic Development Commission approved its share on November 20, and the Gazette named ACCO on October 31. We’re just the first to put the address on it.
Things that need permission make noise. Things that don’t, don’t.