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GREENSBORO — Guilford County commissioners could hand nearly $1 million to FedEx Ground for locating up to 470 jobs here in the next six years.

County commissioners on Thursday will hold a public hearing on whether to give $952,500 in incentives to

FedEx Ground for a 420,000-square-foot, $110 million shipping center.

The board could vote to give the incentives after the public hearing.

The ground hub’s first year of operation would bring 80 full-time jobs paying an average of more than $40,000 annually.

The proposed location for the southeast United States sorting facility in Kernersville is a few miles from Piedmont Triad International Airport, where FedEx is building an East Coast air shipping hub.

About two-thirds of the $1.6 million in property tax revenue from the ground center’s first three years would be returned to FedEx under the deal.

Those close to the FedEx project say that one FedEx facility does not guarantee another nearby, and the incentives could play a role in whether the ground hub comes here.

“It’s not a done deal,” said Dan Lynch, president of the Greensboro Economic Development Partnership. “The two divisions are totally different.”

The Triad is up against locations in Tennessee and South Carolina for the distribution center, he said.

David Westrick, spokesman for FedEx Ground, said that the airport and the shipping hub would have nothing to do with each other.

“It’s part of a national expansion plan, a multibillion-dollar plan, adding several hundred facilities,” Westrick said. The company’s goal is to go from shipping 3.5 million packages per day to shipping 5.6 million by 2013.

The company wants to be close to major highways and college students, he said.

“We have work at unusual off-hours,” he said, adding that college students are more likely to work a shift from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.

Charlotte already has one ground hub, Lynch said, which could send overflow to the proposed Kernersville facility. Forsyth County has another, smaller FedEx distribution center.

Commissioner Melvin “Skip” Alston said Monday that he’s not certain that the ground project will come here if the county withholds incentives.

“If I was convinced that it is a done deal, then I would not support it,” he said.

Lynch said he believes that landing the ground hub would also benefit the Triad by raising the region’s profile while the country’s economy shows signs of stalling.

“There’s not a lot of projects of this size that are out there right now,” he said. “With unemployment going up and just what’s going on globally, we’re very fortunate to have a project of this size and scope looking on us.”

Commissioners Kay Cashion, Bruce Davis, Paul Gibson and John Parks were out of town Monday and unavailable for contact. Other commissioners did not return phone messages.

Commissioner Billy Yow declined to comment.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com