She does much of her work behind the scenes, but when it’s done, governors and mayors smile and shake hands with CEOs in front of news cameras.
Betty McIntosh is the managing director of the business incentives practice for Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate services firm. In plain English: McIntosh helps clients that want to relocate get economic incentives to do so.
Her most recent deal helped get Porsche Cars North America about $14 million in incentives for a new $100 million headquarters, including a test track, in Hapeville. The company will be moving from a cushy office building in Sandy Springs to the former Ford industrial site on Atlanta’s Southside near the airport.
Other clients are as familiar: Johnson & Johnson, Hyundai, DaimlerChrysler, Stride Rite and gunmaker Remington.
When she first started, she earned the nickname “Million Dollar Betty” because she hoped for an incentive package that was at least a million dollars. That’s a lot of dough for a tax adviser who once would get kudos for saving clients $10,000. And it hooked her on economic incentive work.
Ken Ashley, a senior director in Cushman & Wakefield’s tenant services group, said McIntosh is an expert at understanding incentives and negotiating the best deals for her clients.
“Probably less than 200 people in the United States have the level of expertise and experience that Betty McIntosh does. It’s a highly customized and specialized service,” Ashley said.
Here, she reveals how she parlayed a tax job into one of the most secretive and exciting jobs in commercial real estate. (The interview has been edited for clarity and length.)
Q: Describe what you do.
A: I consider myself a knowledge broker. My job is to help companies when they are considering a move, consolidating or going into a new marketplace. It’s trying to help a company sort through the maze and get up and running faster and better. Some of that includes financial incentives, picking the right place with the right work force and the right business climate. It’s asking, what do they need?
Q: How did you get into this line of work?
A: At Coopers & Lybrand [now PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Memphis], the tax firm’s second largest client wanted to build a $100 million plant in Tennessee, with 75 very well-paying jobs. The tax director had talked to Saturn, which was also building a plant and had gotten all these incentives. It was 1990, right after the recession of the 1980s. My boss called me in ... and the next thing I know, the Tennessee governor’s office was calling me, saying, “We’ll send a plane down to pick you up.” Then you get off the plane and you get hats and T-shirts and they’re just falling all over you. I’m thinking, wow, I like this. I had been dealing with the IRS and Department of Revenue people, who you can’t even buy their lunch.
Q: Do you have to keep up with incentives in all 50 states?
A: There are only so many ways incentives work and states copy each other. Tax and other incentives are designed to reward certain behaviors. I am lucky because of my tax background and after 20 years in this business, I know how to ask the hard questions and who to call. Then I put their number on speed dial.
Q: How do incentives in Georgia differ from other states?
A: I think Georgia has good incentives and they’re getting better. Georgia Allies is its biggest strength. It’s a group of the large utilities, including Georgia Power, the state and communities that all work together. It’s a lot of resources for someone like me. It’s a machine. It’s not that way everywhere else.
Q: You recently worked on the Porsche deal. What about Sandy Springs losing them to the Southside?
A: It wasn’t a matter of Sandy Springs “losing.” The Aerotropolis [the former Ford plant now owned by Jacoby Development] gave them a different opportunity and it was what they could do with the campus close to the airport that they couldn’t do anywhere else within the metro area.
Q: In the Porsche deal, did you have to fight people off at restaurants who wanted to talk to you about the site search?
A: We have code names for projects and we try our best to keep it under wraps. I was flying under the radar screen. We just don’t need people coming out of the woodwork, like contractors and other communities.
Q: Which of the rival states in the Southeast seem to do the best job of attracting companies?
A: Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Texas. In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal really wanted to handle economic development in a new way. They took our (Georgia’s) Quick Start program and called it Fast Start. It’s quite a compliment, though it’s probably irritating to Georgia.
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