Atlanta gets another Fortune 500 HQ!!! (Columbus, Peachtree City: home, buying, good schools)

[onemanarmy]

Originally Posted by atlantagreg30127

This is nothing more than a cost saving measure by them.

It's good for the tax base of the City of Duluth of course, but yeah, you have to consider the fact that traffic is bad out there, and there is no "real" public transit in that area. In more recent times, some companies have shunned Atlanta locations for these reasons, so it does seem an odd pic for a larger company in terms of location.

Here's why:

As someone else said, rents/ownership are cheaper. Second, there's a HUGE number of Mexican immigrants in that area for the "filler jobs", and pay scales are much lower down here in General. They're going to save a bundle in payroll by moving here. So the City of Duluth in general will be the biggest winner simply from the taxes coming in.

I guess my argument is if the State of Georgia (refraining from using the word, WE") is offering 60mm in incentives for a company that has 2100 employees mostly white collar, allowing them to move to Duluth is seriously flawed, especially if there is a glut of space available within the City.

[JoeP]

This is no cause for celebration, a struggling city is now facing the loss of 1250 jobs from one of its iconic large companies, which in fact is selling out and the state of GA has no problem with putting out endless amounts of taxpayer money to help destroy Dayton.

And people are celebrating. It's sick.

[onemanarmy]

Originally Posted by JoeP

This is no cause for celebration, a struggling city is now facing the loss of 1250 jobs from one of its iconic large companies, which in fact is selling out and the state of GA has no problem with putting out endless amounts of taxpayer money to help destroy Dayton.

And people are celebrating. It's sick.

No cause for celebrating, especially while throwing more gasoline on our own fire, TRAFFIC.

[BobKovacs]

Originally Posted by onemanarmy

No cause for celebrating, especially while throwing more gasoline on our own fire, TRAFFIC.

Hold on now- two posts ago you were complaining that they made a sweet deal to get NCR to Duluth, rather than getting them to move into Altanta proper. Dontcha think having them create 1,300 more jobs in downtown would have a far greater impact on traffic than having those jobs out in the burbs??? Sure, some people would take mass transit to work, but I'd bet you'd have a minimum of 1,000 of those 1,300 folks driving into downtown every morning, one by one.

[Mishap]

They used to own the building on Satellite Blvd along w/ several others when they actually did manufacturing. They sold it '06 and leased back half the space letting the buyer deal w/ the unoccupied 100,000 sqft. They aren't going to use much more water than they do now since it's a corporate HQ and all manufacturing takes place overseas now or at contract factories from Flextronics or other EMS companies.

I personally think tax breaks would have been better if they instead got companies to hire new grads in tech fields that typically pay much better than $70k within a few years. At least then we'd be hiring up top new grads that typically get shipped off to other higher paying states. Bringing over some HR, admin, and finance jobs is ok but we're stealing them from another state and its not like these jobs were created b/c NCR was such a great growth company. They've likely laid off more people in GA over the last decade than they're bringing over now. The company employed over 60,000 people in 1990. They're down to 22,000 now and still cutting while shipping the tech and manufacturing jobs overseas.

Remember it's Sonny Purdue we're talking about. He could care less if ATL minus the airport fell off the map so long as the income taxes were still there.

[Mishap]

Oh yeah, don't forget NCR will be off the Fortune 500 by next year at the rate its falling down the list now. It's now #446 and was #116 at the inception of the list in 1955. The only real jobs the company's created in the last 20 years are in the Philippines and India.

Congrats to Purdue for picking such a winner by throwing such lavish tax breaks that will take decades of state income tax to make up.

[onemanarmy]

Originally Posted by BobKovacs

Hold on now- two posts ago you were complaining that they made a sweet deal to get NCR to Duluth, rather than getting them to move into Altanta proper. Dontcha think having them create 1,300 more jobs in downtown would have a far greater impact on traffic than having those jobs out in the burbs??? Sure, some people would take mass transit to work, but I'd bet you'd have a minimum of 1,000 of those 1,300 folks driving into downtown every morning, one by one.

I don't think they were mutually exclusive and nor did I imply they were sweet deals. I said if we are going to pay 60mm, twice the amount offered via Ohio we should thought about our infrastructure. I like the deal for the region in the SHORT TERM.

Thats a very myopic view. One, 300 cars off the road is a start. Two, the option to not drive is always available. Three, locating in the City will almost certaintly bring down total average drive time.

[noah]

decades to make up? What about the $150 million of payroll coming here, thats a good chunk of wages coming to the area and I for one do not find $70K salaries to be chump change. That is far above the medium income in this state. Even if they are not Fortune 500 we should still welcome them and if it means some tax incentives that is fine. I haven't seen in print what exactly the incentives are but if its tax breaks they wouldnt be paying Ga taxes if they didnt locate here.

Originally Posted by Mishap

Oh yeah, don't forget NCR will be off the Fortune 500 by next year at the rate its falling down the list now. It's now #446 and was #116 at the inception of the list in 1955. The only real jobs the company's created in the last 20 years are in the Philippines and India.

Congrats to Purdue for picking such a winner by throwing such lavish tax breaks that will take decades of state income tax to make up.

[Mishap]

Originally Posted by noah

decades to make up? What about the $150 million of payroll coming here, thats a good chunk of wages coming to the area and I for one do not find $70K salaries to be chump change. That is far above the medium income in this state. Even if they are not Fortune 500 we should still welcome them and if it means some tax incentives that is fine. I haven't seen in print what exactly the incentives are but if its tax breaks they wouldnt be paying Ga taxes if they didnt locate here.

I get the feeling its not all tax breaks b/c NCR only pays $60M annually in taxes total during a better year and right now they're losing money so they wouldn't pay any income tax. It would take them almost a decade to clear the $60M in tax breaks.

I'm not disagreeing that $150M isn't a great boon for GA but it's a can of worms we're opening up for other states to poach companies a lot better than NCR from us. The 1,300 jobs or so from the HQ were essentially taken from another state w/ the sole purpose of reducing their costs. We didn't innovate or provide any benefit outside of handing them money. NCR isn't a high tech company by any means these days and their long term benefit to the state is relatively limited.

[davesm]

Originally Posted by JoeP

This is no cause for celebration, a struggling city is now facing the loss of 1250 jobs from one of its iconic large companies, which in fact is selling out and the state of GA has no problem with putting out endless amounts of taxpayer money to help destroy Dayton.

And people are celebrating. It's sick.

Joe Dude... You're post struck a nerve in me. Really. I know there are winners and losers, but when the good hard working people of Dayton lose everyone loses. I can imagine if Home Depot decided to relocate HQ to another city.

If you look at a couple of the reasons why they are moving it does make some sense (financial incentives aside). (1) Hartsfield-Jackson. Direct Atlanta to Shanghai flights. They are really trying to reach out Internationally and Atlanta is a better location for that. Businesses really need to make it easier for their customers to do business with them, and Atlanta is a direct flight from most major cities in the world. (2) Available workforce. Atlanta is one of the youngest and educated cities in America. It's a College Town. NCR can benefit from this, because young educated people nationwide want to move to Atlanta.

It was mentioned before NCR although a Fortune 500 company seems to be a sinking ship of sorts. Maybe this move is necessary to keep them competitive in the Global Market. NCR will always have close ties and employees in Dayton, because the company was built on the shoulders of that community. In the end let's all hope this turns into a Win/Win and NCR is able to turn things around and benefit not only Atlanta, but Dayton too.

Viva La Dayton!!!