Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon had multiple near-term lease expirations across three states, requiring review of a wide range of location options to consolidate operations and reduce costs.

Other states offered significant "new job" incentives to attract BNY Mellon, but New Jersey was ill-equipped to save its existing jobs. BLS & Co. initiated a campaign to create a new "retention" incentive for New Jersey, beginning with a "white paper" on its policy merits, and organized a coalition of business and government leaders to promote the new legislation.

The new program - Business Retention & Relocation Grant (BRRAG) - provided transferable tax credits for large projects, and premium incentives for projects relocating to urban centers.  The legislature adopted BRRAG in time for BNY Mellon's location decision.

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.

BLS & Co.  served as incentives advisor during the relocation of the headquarters of CPG International from Skokie, Illinois (part of the Chicago MSA). Complicating the move was the need to move the C-Suite to the new location in advance of the rest of the headquarters staff, necessitating the potential for staged growth, potentially in multiple locations. Other locations considered included downtown Chicago and Cincinnati, OH.

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.

BLS & Co. conducted a comparison of warehouse labor markets in Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia to help inform Avon's location decision-making.

We examined labor supply, demand, quality, and cost indicators including present and projected population levels, unemployment rates, education attainment, unionization, wage and income levels.

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.

Eby-Brown engaged BLS & Co. to provide incentives advisory services for a new distribution center/warehouse facility to service customers in the Midwest and Mid-South regions of the United States.

The company short-listed locations in Kentucky and Indiana, and BLS & Co. secured competitive incentive offers for locations in both states. The company selected a location in Shepherdsville, KY to construct a 300,000 SF build-to-suit lease-back facility. 

BLS & Co. secured an incentives package for Eby-Brown, a wholesale distributor for the convenience store industry. The company engaged BLS & Co. to provide incentives advisory services for a potential relocation to Indiana or Tennessee from its awkward, outdated layout in Naperville, IL. The company ultimately elected to remain in the Chicago area, securing a new, state-of-the-art space in Naperville.

TradePoint Atlantic (TPA) – previously Sparrows Point Terminal – is a former 3,200 acre Bethlehem Steel plant site located in southeastern Baltimore County, Maryland.  TPA purchased the brownfield site in the fall of 2014 with plans to redevelop it into a major East Coast multi-modal distribution and manufacturing hub.

BLS & Co. was engaged to develop a comprehensive strategy to secure the public financing sources needed to mitigate the significant cost of repositioning a brownfields site of this scale and complexity.  Our services included:

• Benchmark analysis of the location’s incentives competitiveness versus similar competitive locations in seven other states;
• Management of a multi-firm team responsible for identifying and prioritizing available federal, state and local grant, incentives and financing programs to allow the developer to pursue environmental remediation and infrastructure improvements beyond what would otherwise be possible given market-based ROI targets;
• Development and execution of an overall strategy to design new incentives tools to improve the competitiveness of the site for potential tenants; and
• Development of a strategy for pursuit of public site development/remediation financing.

The competitive benchmarking analysis revealed an opportunity to improve the cost competitiveness of the site via the introduction of a targeted sales and use tax exemption for specified construction materials and warehousing equipment.  BLS & Co. served as “subject matter expert” to assist TPA in pursuit of the required legislation by documenting the competitive market-based rationale for the proposed exemption, providing data on similar programs in other locations, drafting proposed legislation and providing expert testimony during Senate and House hearings on the proposed legislation.  On May 19, 2016, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed the enabling legislation.