BLS & Co. was engaged by AbleTo Inc, a behavioral healthcare provider, to provide an incentives strategy for its planned new facility. The company was rapidly expanding, seeking to create new jobs in its technology and software development division with wages over $100,000 annually.
As part of the incentives package, AbleTo Inc., was approved for Excelsior Jobs Tax Credit incentive program for steadily creating new jobs in the state of New York.
BLS & Co. advised Colgate Palmolive on behalf of a new personal care products manufacturing plant in Greenwood, South Carolina. The initial search geography included the southeastern and mid-Atlantic United States. BLS & Co.'s energy services group performed infrastructure due diligence on the preferred site, identifying several critical issues to be remedied. The incentive package was comprised of various tax credits for job creation, investment, and port usage; a closing fund grant award; sales and use tax exemptions, training assistance, and property reductions.
BLS & Co. worked with Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) on two projects: a New Jersey-based incentives advisory and a Florida-based site selection.
BLS & Co. developed and executed the incentives strategy to facilitate the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC) move from Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey. DTCC’s migration and ongoing operations in New Jersey were financed, in part, by the EDA’s Business Employment Incentive Program (BEIP). DTCC also became the first beneficiary of the Economic Redevelopment and Growth (ERG) Grant program.
In 2002, the “Fed White Paper” challenged the financial industry to make the investments required to assure continuity and liquidity in capital markets. For the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), this challenge gave rise to an intensive confidential site search that scrutinized multiple markets over six months. The search ultimately concluded in Tampa, where the collaboration of state, county and city commitments made a material difference in off-setting project costs.
The approved incentives included the Governor’s Closing Fund and new city and county programs created for this project. BLS & Co. also advised the client on integration and restructuring of its pre-existing incentives agreement in NYC into its overall redeployment and diversification of operations to Florida.
Our New Jersey incentives advisory project resulted in:
Our Florida site selection project resulted in:
BLS & Co. secured an incentives package for AeroFarms for its headquarters and R&D operation on a three-acre site in Newark, NJ, developed by the RBH Group. AeroFarms is the largest indoor aeroponic farm in the world, growing up to two million pounds per year of leafy greens in a safe, sanitary and environmentally controlled facility.
BLS & Co. was engaged by Mead Johnson Nutritionals, following its spinoff by Bristol-Myer Squibb, to advise the company on the choice of destination for its new executive offices.
BLS & Co. managed a multi-market comparative analysis in North America that ultimately resulted in the relocation of the company's leadership tier to a new Class A office space in Glenview, IL (suburban Chicago).
The firm also secured an EDGE grant from the State of Illinois to reduce the costs and help manage the risks associated with the redeployment.
When Roche required assistance to fast-track a decision on the location of its new Translational Clinical Research Center (TCRC), the company engaged BLS & Co. to secure incentives in support of this elite research early development organization. After a thorough site selection process, the company chose the build-to-suit Alexandria Center on Manhattan’s east side for its new facility.
BLS & Co. served as financial advisor for a groundbreaking cooperative venture between the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa and Merck to secure public financing to create over 300,000 square feet of life-sciences oriented development on a 25-acre site.
Moffitt created a wholly owned subsidiary called M2Gen to implement the project, which began with the construction of a 50,000 square foot facility that will house labs and related facilities focused on revolutionizing the way cancer is diagnosed and treated.
BLS & Co. conceptualized the incentives package for the project and managed the analysis, negotiations, structuring, approvals and documentation of the public financing. The public financing package constituted more than one-fourth the total project capitalization.
Prudential employs more than 4,800 people in the City of Newark where the Company occupies more than 1.8 million square feet of space. With several of its leases in the City set to expire the Company commenced a comprehensive evaluation of its Newark occupancy to identify the optimal location strategy.
BLS & Co. advised Prudential on the role of incentives in its overall location strategy, and ultimately secured approval of an Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit award in support of the construction of a proposed new facility and the creation of new high-compensation positions. The project, which will result in a redevelopment of an entire city block, represents the single largest project in Newark in a generation.
Since our first project with Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”) in 2008, BLS & Co. has served as strategic advisor on multiple site selection and incentives advisory projects throughout the company’s real estate portfolio, involving over $8 billion in planned investment and 3,000 in announced new positions.
Project Highlights
BLS & Co. and its energy services affiliate Sugarloaf Associates conducted a thorough review of Florida Power & Light’s 35-county territory to pre-qualify sites for data centers and mission-critical facilities.
Initially, four diverse sites were selected. The sites offer a unique combination of factors desired by today’s mission critical and data center operations, including highly reliable and redundant power and fiber infrastructures, competitive cost structures, and locations insulated from manmade and natural risks.
BLS & Co. and its energy services affiliate, Sugarloaf Associates, identified nine "Data Center Qualified Sites" for American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP), one of the nation's largest utilities. After a comprehensive review of locations across AEP's 11-state territory, BLS & Co. qualified sites with reliable and redundant power supply, strong fiber networks, low disaster risks and a business-friendly climate.
The team designed a three-phase evaluation process that analyzed the electric supply and capacity, access to long and short-haul fiber providers, water availability, electric costs, tax exemptions and incentives, demographics, vendor/supplier networks and the ability to complete construction within 18 months.
As an extra step, a third-party engineering company, Intelligent Building Systems (IBS), modeled each site's ability to accommodate a 100,000-square-foot raised-floor data center designed to current industry specifications.
BLS & Co. developed and executed an incentives strategy to induce the company to consolidate Royal Bank of Scotland's North American corporate bank, based in NYC, and its RBS/Greenwich Capital headquarters in a new office and trading floor in Stamford, CT. The package consists of transferable corporate income tax credits and other incentives in connection with the proposed retention and creation of approximately 1,800 jobs. The scale of this package required legislative hearings and consent.
BLS & Co. has represented Citigroup on projects throughout North America. We managed the development and implementation of an incentive strategy for two mirror 300,000 sf data center facilities, one in Ohio and one in Texas. The incentives in both locations included real and personal property tax abatements. In Ohio, BLS & Co. structured a unique public financing, including the creation of a Port Authority.
BLS & Co. serves as location and incentives advisor to biotechnology industry leader Genentech, the South San Francisco-based member of the Roche Group. Genentech develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines to treat patients worldwide with serious medical conditions. During our most recent engagement for Genentech, BLS & Co. managed a nationwide search for a second location for their Access Solutions Patient Service Center. Access Solutions employees help patients understand their insurance benefits; find ways to help those who cannot afford their Genentech medicines; and work with doctors and pharmacists to deliver medicines to patients. With the advice and guidance of the firm, Genentech selected Portland, OR for this mission critical operation, which opened for business in May 2019. The new Portland Patient Access Center employs approximately 175 full-time specialists and an almost equal number of contingent employees during the peak insurance benefit open season. The firm also advised Genentech on an Oregon Business Retention Program (BEP) grant and various market-entry strategies.
BLS & Co. provided incentives advisory services for SKF USA Inc.’s new Global Technical Center – Americas (GTCA), an engineering research and development center supporting SKF’s North and South American manufacturing operations. Naperville, IL -- a suburb of Chicago – was chosen for the 130,000 square foot build-to-suit facility.
Goya Foods is the premier provider of authentic Latino and Caribbean cuisine. BLS & Co. advised the company as it sought to address capacity constraints at its New Jersey headquarters and distribution facility.
BLS & Co. secured an award under the Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit program to support the project, which will include the creation of over 100 new jobs and the retention of over 300 existing jobs.