Last week, there was an extremely interesting announcement made by the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce: PartnerHero – a consulting firm that provides businesses with outsourced services – is locating in Greensboro and plans to hire 200 people and invest nearly $7 million in a new operation at 7900 McCloud Road.
Now, these types of multimillion-dollar economic development wins for the area, with hundreds of new jobs, are quite commonplace in Greensboro and Guilford County these days, but this case is extremely unusual.
Can you guess why?
Here’s the answer: Unlike virtually every other announcement of a company bringing this type of project to the area, there was no paragraph in the announcement that stated the company would be receiving economic incentives from the city, the county or the state.
In fact, PartnerHero didn’t even request incentives – which was quite a mystery since virtually every large company that expands in a major way in Greensboro or locates to Greensboro asks for incentives.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston said it was highly unusual and he confirmed that the county had not been presented with a request for incentives. In fact, he said, he knew little about the project until the public announcement.
Normally, a company would have asked the Greensboro City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners for incentives and then there would be two legally required public hearings on the matter.
Jake Keys, the vice president of Marketing and Communications for the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce looked into the matter and was able to provide an answer to the question.
“It was their timeline,” Keys said.
He said the company was anxious to move quickly and get the project off the ground and it would have taken too long for the city’s and county’s economic incentives requests processes to have played out.
For those not familiar with the procedure, a company approaches Greensboro’s or Guilford County’s economic development officials and say it’s considering this area but also considering some other places as well. So, they ask, what are you and Guilford County willing to give us if we locate here? Obviously the bigger the project the more they can ask for, and, if a project is big enough, then state incentives might even come into play as well.
As part of the process, the Greensboro City Council has to go into closed session and discuss the matter, as does the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. Then public hearings must be announced well before the hearing. Then the City Council and the commissioners hold the public hearings and, in recent years, always vote to grant the incentives requests.
All of that takes time and, in this case, it wasn’t time that PartnerHero wanted to spend.
So, Greensboro and Guilford County just got a big project with lots of new jobs for free – just like it used to decades ago.
PartnerHero’s services include things such as customer support, quality assurance, software development, the implementation of artificial intelligence tools, and other services that help companies analyze various business metrics.
While economic incentives weren’t granted, helping convince the company to locate in Greensboro was a joint effort.
The Guilford County Economic Development Alliance, the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce, the High Point Economic Development Corporation all worked together with the North Carolina Department of Commerce, Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, City of Greensboro, Guilford County, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, Guilford Technical Community College, and Guilford Works to convince PartnerHero to make its investment in Guilford County.
While the company isn’t being paid to come here, area economic development officials did commit to aiding the company in some aspects of its workforce development.
Oh, betting there are kick backs. We know how the city and county work their magic.
Once they open I will go to their place of business and give them a dollar just because they did not blackmail the County taxpayers.
Another duh moment. The only incentives the City & County need to offer in order to attract new business is a lower tax rate, less regulation, good police & fire, good infrastructure.
Our govt can’t do that. They want lots of money & govt jobs for the faithful.
Just make me King of Guilford County.
Yes Miller, you can get an AMEN
Nice
Good for Greensboro
Correct- you only have to Bribe North Carolina State Senators who, at a cost (donation) will put thru legislation that is good for 1 or a few individuals. The heck with listening to their constituents. No money(donation) = no legislation. This is what is being shown to our youth! Remember this when it is time to vote.
As stated before, on principle, I do not agree with the PartnerHero business. PartnerHero is a BPO, Business Process Outscoring. PartnerHero manufactures nothing, they do not provide a service to the average American. What they do is take up space with one goal in mind, sending work outside the US. When a call is made to customer service of a company and someone on the other end of the line is a second English language-speaking individual, thank a company like PartnerHero. They may be a partner, and they may be a hero, but not to the American worker. But they are a partner and are a hero to businesses that want to offshore American jobs. Greensboro is not a tech hub. So, one must ask the question, why Greensboro? As far as incentives, all PartnerHero needs is office space (already exiting and ready to move in,) telephones and equipment. Standard fare for opening an office down the street or across the country. My question is where are these 200 employees coming from? Check back in a year and see how things are going.
Interesting. Sounds like it bears watching.
The absurd practice by our leaders of paying Corporations to move to our area is nothing but “Representation without Taxation”! If we had responsible Federal, State, and Local leaders they would end this absurd practice!
It’s nice to see a Corporation move to the Greensboro area based on merit and not payola! Too bad the Greensboro area did not have enough merit to keep many of the big boys here including VF Corporation!
The commissioners and council must be so disappointed they didn’t have a chance to get a cut of the pie. …crazy that a business would just come declare the government works too slow for them to benefit and still sets up shop!!! Kudos