The announcement was made today with Governor Perdue on hand at the Annex to the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The presence of Governor Perdue was significant because, despite receiving the second biggest incentives package from the City and County of all time for a local company*, companies within the state are not eligible for state-level incentives if they are thinking about relocating.** However, according to the Triad Business Journal, the state approved a Job Development Institute Grant for the company to help train employees which could be worth as much as $4.2 million. In thinking about relocating, Inmar, Inc. had cited difficulty in finding qualified IT applicants. In addition to keeping over 700 jobs here, Inmar's decision to stay in Winston translates into at least*** 212 new jobs with an average salary of over $70,000 and $60 million in infrastructure development. The company has not said where it plans to relocate - stay tuned for that exciting news!
* this time, the City and County together agreed to $2.8 million in incentives; apparently the largest incentives package ever for a local company was $5 million to Wachovia to building the Wachovia Building
**should this law be changed? I suppose it is written that way to prevent every large company from threatening to relocate to leverage funds from the state but it also puts us at a competitive disadvantage for companies that are legitimately thinking about leaving and being enticed by lucrative packages elsewhere...
***the City has incorporated salary and number of job benchmarks into their incentives package - the numbers are enforced by clawback provisions
