GE at a glance
— 8th on Fortune 500 list
— 9th ‘most admired’ U.S. company
— $148.3 billion in revenue in last fiscal year
— Headquarters in Fairfield, Conn.
— 800 employees at headquarters; 5,700 in Connecticut; 305,000 worldwide
How Atlanta-based companies compare, by annual revenue
Home Depot, $83.2 billion
UPS, $58.2 billion
Coca-Cola, $46 billion
Delta Air Lines, $40.4 billion
Southern Co., $18.5 billion
How Atlanta-based companies compare, by annual revenue
Home Depot, $83.2 billion
UPS, $58.2 billion
Coca-Cola, $46 billion
Delta Air Lines, $40.4 billion
Southern Co., $18.5 billion
Talk of a potentially blockbuster corporate move to metro Atlanta perked up after a recent published report that the company has discounted Dallas as a relocation site.
It’s still unclear how serious General Electric, no. 8 on the Fortune 500 list, is about leaving its current home in Fairfield, Conn. GE execs, upset about state tax hikes, last spring publicly said they’d formed a committee to explore a move. Some suspect GE’s main goal is to get Connecticut to ease the tax load.
But the idea of a move set recruiters’ hearts aflutter, in Georgia and numerous other states. The prospect has even prompted real estate renderings of how a GE headquarters complex would look at Atlantic Station and the site of the old Doraville auto plant.
Atlanta has to be high on the list of possibilities, said Mark Sweeney, senior principal at McCallum Sweeney, site selection advisers based in Greenville, S.C.
“It has the size they would want, the diversity, the airport with the international connections, the pro-business climate in the state,” he said.
Sweeney said a global company leaving metro New York would typically look at three metros: Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas.
Bloomberg News reported GE had decided to drop Dallas as a site for a headquarters. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg said GE was peeved at the active opposition of Texas’ congressional delegation to the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which provides financing for some overseas sales. Georgia’s senators split on the issue.
The removal of a perennial rival for corporate relos could boost Atlanta’s prospects. But several top real estate executives told the AJC last week they’d heard nothing to indicate a deal was heating up.
According to a report last week in the Hartford Courant, 25 states have contacted GE since its announcement of a relocation committee. A Connecticut state legislator told the paper 12 states have made presentations and 11 governors have visited the company in person.
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed participated in Georgia’s pitch over the summer. State officials expect a GE delegation to visit metro Atlanta this fall, according to one person with knowledge of the matter.
GE is being heavily courted by neighboring New York, which is pitching a short, cross-border move to Westchester County that would enable GE to retain more of the 800 or so people at its headquarters.
Connecticut politicians continue to talk about measures that would persuade GE to stay put.
But the company could ultimately choose the same path as UPS, the shipping giant that was based in Greenwich, Conn., before moving to Atlanta in the early 1990s.
Factors like housing costs, the airport and a large base of students and young workers played a role then. Those factors also would play to Atlanta’s advantage if GE is seriously looking, said Abe Schear, a real estate expert and partner in the Atlanta office of Arnall Golden Gregory.
“Atlanta has got a lot of young, smart people from a deep group of very good universities,” he said.
He added: “It is hard for us to overstate the value of the airport.”
Gregg Metcalf, a vice president at real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle or JLL, said relocating companies increasingly seek places where recruited talent – especially millennials — want to live and where there is a mixture of a strong cultural and business environment.
“They are not going to go to a super-duper tax environment if it’s not a place millennials want to live,” he said.
That has helped put Atlanta on the top of several lists, despite the knocks the city sometimes incurs on crime, traffic and spotty schools, he said.
GE already has a significant presence in the Atlanta region — as it does in several cities, given its size — with two energy-related units in north Atlanta. One of its vice chairmen, John Rice, has a home in Buckhead.
A GE move could come at a potentially awkward moment in the real estate market, said Bob Simons, partner Hartman Simons, a commercial real estate firm.
The economic rebound has cut vacancies in “Class A” markets such as Buckhead, making it more difficult to find available space, especially for a huge company. “It’s getting harder and harder to find big blocks of vacancies,” Simons said.
One real estate rendering shows a massive GE campus built from the ground up at the old Doraville plant site, being redeveloped by Integral Group. The Atlantic Station rendering shows a GE tower on the north side of the prominent complex along the downtown connector.
Big-scale corporate moves are coveted because they bring high-paying jobs that create two more in the area through increased consumer and business spending, Georgia State economist Rajeev Dhawan said.
“More white collar jobs are good for the housing market and housing prices,” he added.
One negative: Big companies tend to want big incentives.
“They’ll be asking for handouts,” Dhawan said.
GE, for its part, isn’t commenting on potential candidates. The company also isn’t saying when it expects to decide where – or whether – to replant its headquarters flag.
The company’s exploratory team “is currently engaged in the process and is taking many factors into consideration,” GE spokesman Seth Martin told the Courant. “When there is a final decision on relocation, we will communicate it publicly.”
Staff writer Greg Bluestein contributed to this report.
