Guinness to close Baltimore production brewery

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by james777

The state's economic development agency helped them locate there but I do not know if any financial incentives were involved. Those programs that give financial incentives to open new businesses are just like the social programs in cities, a grand waste of taxpayer money. If sales warranted higher production, that plant would already have been the primary candidate to expand to because the company had owned the facility for years.

The stories don't say if they are closing the restaurant and brewpub also. I always questioned the logic of putting a brewpub out in the middle of nowhere. It belongs in a city, town or shopping area that has a lot of foot traffic.

You can bet your ass there were "incentives". Low interest loans, deferred reassessment of the property, tax breaks-both property and business income, maybe incentives related to hiring chronic unemployed, waivers if additional sewer/water taps or capacity was needed. Maybe all of them or a combination.

[Woodlands]

Originally Posted by North Beach Person

You can bet your ass there were "incentives". Low interest loans, deferred reassessment of the property, tax breaks-both property and business income, maybe incentives related to hiring chronic unemployed, waivers if additional sewer/water taps or capacity was needed. Maybe all of them or a combination.

Do you think that these incentives "ran out" and thus they were like.. 'oh well lets go'? Seems often times polticos pull out these incentives to land the deal to get the political gain from it...and then by the time they run out the politico has moved on up the political food chain or won their re election thus serving their purpose. I hope that is not the case. Hopefully they will land something else but they too would likely want "incentives". Seems like a great site and location for something

[North Beach Person]

Originally Posted by Woodlands

Do you think that these incentives "ran out" and thus they were like.. 'oh well lets go'? Seems often times polticos pull out these incentives to land the deal to get the political gain from it...and then by the time they run out the politico has moved on up the political food chain or won their re election thus serving their purpose. I hope that is not the case. Hopefully they will land something else but they too would likely want "incentives". Seems like a great site and location for something

Any incentives likely ran out or weren't worth it to the company any longer. It actually happens quite often, although many times the development doesn't get built and the incentives just expire.

Remember a few years ago when Marriott was going to move its headquarters and the state came up with a boatload of money to entice them to stay? Same thing.

[North Beach Person]

You also can't discount the possibility that Guiness was losing money on it and decided to close due to that.

[bufflove]

You guys could just look it up instead of speculating back and forth.

"The company is eligible for the state’s Job Creation Tax Credit, and has already applied for the More Jobs for Marylanders program, which was the centerpiece of Governor Hogan’s 2017 Maryland Jobs Initiative, incentivizing manufacturers to create new jobs in the state."

So they received some tax credits based on how many jobs they created/retained, which is basically a given in this day and age of corporate handouts. The More Jobs for Marylanders credit lasts for 10 years - the brewery opened 3 years ago so they had 7 years of credits left available. Considering we're only talking about 200 jobs, the credits were nothing compared to the $90M invested in the site by Diageo, anyway. This is a $100B multinational making a North America business decision that is far larger than the impact of a job credit. Presumably the additional capacity Halethorpe afforded them has become unnecessary for whatever reason. Likely because beer sales in the NA region haven't met growth projections or because there is excess capacity available at another Diageo facility that can be utilized more efficiently.