FLORIDA — Officials have approved a land exchange considered critical to plans to build a new Beech-Nut facility in Montgomery County.

The county’s Industrial Development Agency last week approved the swap that will give the Hero/Beech-Nut Corp. 20.2 acres of land on the eastern edge of the property owned by the Target Corp., county Economic Development Director Ken Rose said.

“This piece is instrumental to the Beech-Nut project,” Rose said.

In exchange, the Target Corp. will get a 43.51 acre parcel situated to the west of its facility in the Florida Business Park on the northern side of state Route 5S — land that’s sat idle for years, Rose said.

Officials at the town, county and state level are reviewing documents as part of the regulatory process for the Hero Corp./ Beech-Nut Project.

The company is planning to build a 635,000 square foot facility at the Florida Business Park.

The parcel is needed because the proposed factory and corporate offices wouldn’t fit on the parcel eyed for the project, Rose said.

“Without Target agreeing to this, we didn’t have a site that would have met Beech-Nut’s time and infrastructure needs,” Rose said.

The use of the land Target is trading will keep the facility as far west as possible and a distance from the new Mohawk Hills development, an 80-plus unit subdivision just to the east of the project on route 5S, Rose said.

A public comment period is under way for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit required for construction to go forward, and a public hearing related to the IDA’s benefit package will be held next week, Rose said.

According to the public notice, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing a permit application for the project that would affect 1.19 acres of wetland and intermittent streams.

The agency is gathering public comment via the mail or e-mail, to be sent to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, Upstate Regulatory Field Office, 1 Buffington St., Building 10, 3rd Floor, Watervliet, NY 12189.

Comments can also be submitted to the attention of John Connell to john.r.connell@usace.army.mil. Documents related to the permit are available on the Internet at www.nan.usace.army.mil/business/buslinks/regulat/pnotices/feb08/index.htm.

Another segment of public comment on the project, a public hearing slated for March 25, will focus on the county IDA’s benefit package offered to Hero/Beech-Nut.

IDAs are required to hold public hearings any time benefits in excess of $100,000 are to be extended, Rose said.

Incentives on the part of the IDA would total $80.9 million over the life of a 20-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, low-interest loans and tax breaks through the Empire Zones program, according to a projects benefit summary compiled by the county economic development office.

The hearing will take place at 6 p.m. on March 25 in the old Town Hall in the town of Florida, 167 Fort Hunter Road, Rose said.