BLS & Co. secured an incentives package for AeroFarms for its headquarters and R&D operation on a three-acre site in Newark, NJ, developed by the RBH Group.  AeroFarms is the largest indoor aeroponic farm in the world, growing up to two million pounds per year of leafy greens in a safe, sanitary and environmentally controlled facility.

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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BLS & Co. to provide incentives advisory services for a potential relocation to Indiana or Tennessee from its awkward, outdated layout in Naperville, IL.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.

BLS & Co. was engaged to advise Burlington Coat Factory (BCF) as part of a competitive location decision-making process for the location of the company’s headquarters. BCF considered locations within New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

BLS & Co. secured an incentive package from the State of New Jersey consisting of Grow NJ tax credits and an exemption from sales tax on construction materials and equipment purchases.

BLS has represented Citigroup on projects throughout North America for over 20 years. Starting with Citi’s initial presence in Tampa, BLS developed and implemented incentives strategies in support of diverse projects, ranging from data centers to enterprise services facilities, across a broad footprint, including Florida, Texas, Ohio, New York and New Jersey.

Most recently, BLS has supported Citi on a multi-phased portfolio optimization process in the NY Metro area, including multiple incentives transactions, ongoing monitoring of legislation and regulations, and intervention in policy making.  BLS also represented Citi in securing incentives in support of its recent decision to expand in the Tampa market.

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. 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/SLA also provided advisory service and expert witness in the development of a new FPL electric economic development rider for data centers and large manufacturing plants in Florida's FPL territory.

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.

Since our first project with Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”) in 2008, BLS & Co. has served as strategic advisor on multiple site selection and incentives advisory projects throughout the company’s real estate portfolio, involving over $8 billion in planned investment and 3,000 in announced new positions.

Project Highlights

• Lebanon, Indiana (API & Gene Therapy Manufacturing)
• Research Triangle Park, North Carolina (Injectables Manufacturing)
• Concord, North Carolina (Injectables Manufacturing)
• Boston, Massachusetts (R&D)
• Limerick, Ireland (Biologics API Manufacturing)

BLS & Co. worked with Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) on two projects: a New Jersey-based incentives advisory and a Florida-based site selection.

BLS & Co. developed and executed the incentives strategy to facilitate the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC) move from Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey. DTCC’s migration and ongoing operations in New Jersey were financed, in part, by the EDA’s Business Employment Incentive Program (BEIP).  DTCC also became the first beneficiary of the Economic Redevelopment and Growth (ERG) Grant program.

In 2002, the “Fed White Paper” challenged the financial industry to make the investments required to assure continuity and liquidity in capital markets. For the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), this challenge gave rise to an intensive confidential site search that scrutinized multiple markets over six months. The search ultimately concluded in Tampa, where the collaboration of state, county and city commitments made a material difference in off-setting project costs.

The approved incentives included the Governor’s Closing Fund and new city and county programs created for this project. BLS & Co. also advised the client on integration and restructuring of its pre-existing incentives agreement in NYC into its overall redeployment and diversification of operations to Florida.

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. 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. crafted land use and community engagement strategies to assist Hercules with the disposition of 2,100 acres of brownfields in New Jersey. The engagement involved strategies to reposition and/or redevelop four sites on a portfolio basis, quickly enabling sale of the most market-ready property to generate the resources needed to pursue the redevelopment potential of the longer-lead sites.   

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.

Panasonic's North American headquarters in Secaucus, NJ no longer met the company's objectives for talent, energy efficiency and branding.

BLS & Co. was engaged to evaluate multiple destinations for the headquarters, both in the NY / NJ metro area as well as locations in CA, IL and GA where the company has surplus real estate capacity.

BLS & Co. was successful in securing a package of state and local incentives in connection with Panasonic’s decision to anchor a new Class A office tower in downtown Newark, including an Urban Transit Hub Tax Credit award and local grants through the Redevelopment Area Bond program.

Panasonic now occupies 10 floors of the 12-story building at Two Riverfront Plaza, Newark’s first new office building in more than 20 years. Designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold certification for new construction and LEED platinum certification for interiors, the project is bringing 1,000 new employees into Newark’s downtown, and provides the catalyst for development of new retail, hospitality and other amenities in the city’s central business district.

CoreNet Global recognized the Panasonic project team with a 2013 Economic Development Leadership Award for spurring economic development, investment and employment in the Brick City.

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. 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 modeled each site's ability to accommodate a 100,000-square-foot raised-floor data center designed to current industry standards.

BLS/Sugarloaf also completed an analysis of sites in 2 states for AEP data center / operations facility.  The team review the infrastructure, both manmade and natural disaster risks and the proximity of service providers to support a data center.

BLS & Co. was engaged by Kuehne + Nagel, a global transport and logistics company, to provide site selection services for a planned new operation and training facility.  After a nationwide search, Kuehne + Nagel decided to locate its first-ever Operational Care Center (OCC) and Career Development Program in downtown Detroit.  The office will employ nearly 200 people by 2021.