HelloFresh, an international meal kit company with offices in New York City and Germany, chose to relocate and expand its operations to Newark, NJ.  After a nationwide search, the firm decided to lease a 217,000 square foot distribution space and an additional 20,000 square feet of office space in downtown Newark.  The NJ Economic Development Authority estimates the project will yield a net benefit to the state of $4.1 million over 20 years.

BLS & Co served as site selection and incentives consultant for Omnicom Group Inc. in support of the company’s competitive location decision-making process for targeted functions to be relocated out of New York City.

BLS & Co. advised Omnicom on evaluation of alternative relocation strategies to maximize savings and minimize operational disruption by redeploying selected operations to be co-located with related functions in cities where the company has successful operating experience and excess real estate capacity. Ultimately, the incentives package from the State of New Jersey was sufficient to induce the company to relocate nearly 500 jobs to Jersey City.  Omnicom considered locations in Connecticut, Texas, Ohio and Costa Rica before selecting New Jersey.

BLS & Co. serves as location and incentives advisor to biotechnology industry leader Genentech, the South San Francisco-based member of the Roche Group.  Genentech develops, manufactures and commercializes medicines to treat patients worldwide with serious medical conditions.  During our most recent engagement for Genentech, BLS & Co. managed a nationwide search for a second location for their Access Solutions Patient Service Center.  Access Solutions employees help patients understand their insurance benefits; find ways to help those who cannot afford their Genentech medicines; and work with doctors and pharmacists to deliver medicines to patients.  With the advice and guidance of the firm, Genentech selected Portland, OR for this mission critical operation, which opened for business in May 2019. The new Portland Patient Access Center employs approximately 175 full-time specialists and an almost equal number of contingent employees during the peak insurance benefit open season. The firm also advised Genentech on an Oregon Business Retention Program (BEP) grant and various market-entry strategies.

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. secured an incentives package for Nestlé Waters North America Inc, relocating its North American headquarters from Greenwich to Stamford, CT. The Stamford location meets the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® (LEED) standards for green buildings.

To help fund the project, BLS & Co. secured an incentives package comprising of low-interest loans, state tax credits and tax exemptions.

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. 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 was pleased to work with MycoWorks, a producer of a biomaterial made from mycelium, on the site selection for their first commercial-scale plant. The finished product is used to make consumer products such as luxury bags, luggage, shoes and other apparel from a sustainable and renewable “leather substitute” material. After a national search for suitable locations to meet operating requirements and other siting criteria, a location was selected and announced in March 2022 in Union, South Carolina. BLS also assisted MycoWorks in the negotiation of a competitive incentives package from both Union County and the South Carolina Department of Commerce.