By Craig Allen
Last July, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution learned that Graphic Packaging, a company headquartered in Marietta with a net income last year of $277 million, was being wooed by the city of Sandy Springs with incentives to relocate there, fattening its tax base by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and lessening Marietta’s. Neither the company nor Sandy Springs officials would comment directly for the AJC’s story.
Graphic Packaging makes commercial packaging products, among other things. The incentives Sandy Springs offered total about $189,000 in tax and fee waivers.
In January 2013, Graphic Packaging, who has now confirmed the move in a January press release, will relocate its headquarters staff of 300 to Sandy Springs in the RiverEdge Summit complex, not too far from Cobb’s Galleria-Cumberland district. The new space will consolidate offices in one location, rather than being spread out, as is the case in its current location off Franklin Road.
Companies have every right to make this kind of decision.
Attracting companies from other states to Georgia with monetary incentives, such as tax breaks, worker training and the like, is generally good policy. Is attracting companies from neighboring locations within the state good policy?
Former AJC columnist and editor, Jim Wooten, didn’t think so and reacted to this news in his Thinking Right column at the time. Two days after the AJC story appeared he wrote, “The Georgia General Assembly should make it illegal for any public body to offer financial incentives for a company to move from one Georgia county to another.”
It’s something to ponder. The Sandy Springs operation to attract the company was dubbed “Project Gamma” to keep it out of the public eye. This made the whole deal sound more nefarious than it needed to be. Why couldn’t Sandy Springs officials have acted more above board on this?
Marietta development folks, who were aware that the company was looking for new space, tried in vain to keep the company. Beth Sessoms, Marietta’s economic development manager, stated that several sites were shown to Graphic Packaging. She was not aware of the incentives offered by Sandy Springs.
After Marietta failed to persuade the company with its alternatives, the Cobb Chamber of Commerce presented several ideas to Graphic Packaging, but no locations could fully satisfy the company’s needs within Cobb.
I asked Sessoms what projects Marietta had in the future to showcase some positive news for the town. She mentioned a movie theater going in on Powder Springs Street and a Wal-Mart grocery store in the same area. It seems Marietta has little to offer big companies.
But, is that really a fair assessment? Marietta has plans to enhance the Franklin Road corridor with something called GreenTech. We await their efforts.
To consolidate office space, along with accepting whatever incentives were negotiated, sounds like good policy for Graphic Packaging.
But I have to agree with Jim Wooten: state leaders should look at the way this was done and decide if new guidelines are necessary to place restrictions on cities and counties if they insist on pursuing intra-state incentive projects.
Craig Allen has lived in Cobb County for 10 years.Reach him at alle3257@bellsouth.net
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