Proquest plans to open a new manufacturing facility in Ypsilanti Township in early 2010, staffing it with about 35 employees of the former NAPC Publishing Co.

The Ann Arbor-based digital archiving company recently leased a 40,000-square-foot industrial building in the Washtenaw Business Park near I-94 and Huron Street to accommodate the operations and staff it acquired this summer from NAPC.

The move also will consolidate other Proquest microfilm manufacturing operations, including the planned shutdown of a facility in Wooster, Ohio.

By spring, up to 30 additional employees will be hired for the new Ypsilanti Township facility, said Elliot Forsyth, Proquest senior vice president.

As part of the move, Proquest is seeking a 7-year tax abatement on the $4.7 million investment, said Ypsilanti Township Clerk Karen Lovejoy Roe. That will be on the Dec. 15 agenda for the Board of Trustees.

The move to the township, Roe said, “mean new jobs and new tax revenue … which, of course, with what we’re facing is great news.”

The move should be completed by Feb. 1, Forsyth said.

Proquest, a specialized information and technology company, acquired the microfilm manufacturing segment of the former NAPC a few months before it was sold by a lender to Superior Capital Partners LLC.

Superior is repositioning the business into NA Publishing. As part of that move, it's selling segments of the business - including recent deals with Edwards Brothers and The Crowley Co. It's also selling its Zeeb Road building and relocating remaining operations to an undetermined local building.

The space leased by Proquest in Ypsilanti Township is half of an 80,000-square-foot multi-tenant facility that formerly was home to Engineered Plastic Products at 699 James L. Hart Parkway.

“They had the choice of going into a facility in northern Ohio or … lease something close to Ann Arbor,” said Jeff Bell of CBRE, who represented Proquest in the deal with co-broker Peter Rogers.

Proximity to the former NAPC facility in Zeeb Road ended up driving the decision, Bell said. That will let the 35 manufacturing employees more easily make the transition.

“The whole idea was to find a facility that could accommodate (the work), was convenient to the current facility and one that could compete economically,” Bell said.

Proquest employs about 1,625 employees across the globe, Forsyth said, including the new managing director of the office it plans to expand in Asia in early 2010.

About 550 of the employees are in Ann Arbor, where its headquarters is at 789 E. Eisenhower.

Business has doubled since it was purchased in 2007, Forsyth said, and employee growth in Ann Arbor over that time is close to 80.

“We love our location here,” Forsyth said.