BLS & Co. represented Fanatics, the leading sports merchandise licensing and ecommerce company, in siting its second fulfillment and light manufacturing center in Frazeysburg, Ohio. The company was experiencing rapid growth, but had continued to process all of its orders from a single fulfillment center located in Florida. In order to maximize efficiency and lower costs while maintaining Fanatic's commitment to fast and reliable delivery, the Company sought to expand its fulfilment network.
During an approximately 6-month engagement, BLS & Co. conducted a comprehensive, multi-state site selection effort focusing on such factors as available real estate, ability to attract and retain labor, comprehensive cost modeling, and incentives. BLS & Co. then helped the company secure an Ohio Jobs Creation Tax Credit and a forgivable equipment lease financing.
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.
BLS & Co. advised New York Life on the relocation of approximately 1,000 employees from the company’s Manhattan headquarters location to a new facility in Westchester, New York.
BLS & Co. was successful in securing an economic development incentive package that included a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes), sales tax exemptions on construction materials and FF&E purchases, a state capital grant and a discount of the utility bills.
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. advised Gartner on a headquarters location and incentives strategy, enabling the renewal of its lease in Stamford, Connecticut. Our firm secured incentives, utilizing the Urban and Industrial Site Reinvestment Tax Credit, DECD direct assistance, sales tax exemption and property tax abatement.
BLS & Co. also conducted a comprehensive evaluation of location options in multiple markets, including Columbus, GA and Jackson, MS, to accommodate Gartner’s growing space requirements for their operations in Ft. Myers, FL. Gartner ultimately decided to lease a newly constructed 120,000 sf facility adjacent to its existing building in Florida.
Our advisory services in Stamford resulted in...
Our evaluation in Florida resulted in...
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.
BLS & Co. represented Diageo during their new headquarters location decision-making process. Their 270,000 square foot building in Norwalk, CT represented the very first project approved under the State's new Urban Reinvestment Act program and resulted in a reward of transferable tax credits, as well as sales tax exemptions and property tax abatements.
BLS & Co. worked with the Philadelphia Inquirer to secure an incentives package for the retention of its headquarters in Center City.
BLS & Co. was successful in restructuring the RCAP incentives program as well as securing low interest rate financing through Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation.
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. was engaged to devise an incentives strategy for ACE Limited (now Chubb) in support of their consolidation and relocation of back office operations from New York City to Jersey City, New Jersey.
As part of the package, ACE was approved for a New Jersey BEIP grant and an exemption from sales tax on construction materials and equipment purchases.
Subaru, which had outgrown its space in Cherry Hill, NJ, hired BLS & Co. to evaluate locations for a new ground-up headquarters and service engineering center. After considering sites in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the firm chose to locate adjacent to the Campbell Gateway District in Camden, NJ.
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. has represented Barr Pharmaceuticals in connection with multiple relocation and expansion projects in New Jersey. BLS & Co. secured incentives for the relocation and growth of its corporate operations from Pomana, New York to Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.
Later, Barr relocated its Woodcliff Lake operations into a larger built-to-suit facility in Montvale, New Jersey and committed to the growth of additional jobs. BLS & Co. secured additional incentives for this project.
BLS & Co. and its principals have provided ongoing site selection and incentives advisory services to QVC, including warehouse and call center location projects in North America and Europe. Our most recent engagement for QVC resulted in a 1 million square foot distribution center (expandable to 2 million square feet) in Florence, South Carolina.
BLS & Co. managed a multi-state, sequential site search, and secured incentives for the project, including free land, infrastructure grants, ad valorem tax abatements, job development grants, job tax credits, and sales tax exemptions.
In addition, BLS expedited permitting and as a result, the warehouse was able to open ahead of schedule.
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:
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.
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.