Business Expansion & Location Solutions

Overview

Parker Poe's Business Expansion & Location Solutions (BELS) Team advises domestic and international companies on all aspects of economic development decisions. Our team of attorneys and consultants combines sound legal strategy with data-driven location analysis to create a seamless, proven structure for companies expanding their businesses in the United States.

Corporate relocations and expansions create a lengthy list of legal, financial, and regulatory issues. We know how much controlling these and other matters can impact the immediate and ongoing success of your company.

Tax incentives often finalize a go or no-go decision. How employment and environmental regulations are addressed during site selection can impact later expansion. Corporate finance and construction agreements often determine whether or not a major move or expansion is ever started, or completed on time and within budget. Providing effective and practical guidance, Parker Poe and Parker Poe Consulting advise clients on these and other economic development decisions so that management can have greater confidence in their decision-making, maintain control of projects and, ultimately, complete their developments on time and within budget.

We provide this comprehensive guidance to domestic and multinational clients, either directly or by supporting their site selection consultants. The capital investments range from the millions to hundreds-of-millions of dollars. Our clients range from automotive and chemical companies to pharmaceutical manufacturers and startup life sciences enterprises.

With all of our clients, we bring to bear our experience and customized service approach to help increase control and confidence in management decisions, while decreasing the time required to move from site selection to planning, building, and operating. We use proprietary planning techniques and tools to define our scope of services and to identify efficiencies and potential delays as a project moves forward.

We routinely represent clients pursuing economic development projects in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia with respect to the following incentives:

One North Carolina Fund grants
Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) assistance
Fee-in-lieu of tax property tax arrangements (FILOT) and operational compliance
Job tax credits
Special source revenue bonds and credits, tax increment financing (TIF), and special assessment districts
Multi-county business/industrial park participation
Enterprise zone/job development credits
Corporate headquarters, R&D, and infrastructure tax credits
Set-aside grants
Local tax grants and other incentives
Property tax abatements
Industrial revenue bonds
Tax increment financing
Employee training program commitments
Infrastructure commitments, including Community Development Block Grants
Income allocation and apportionment agreements
Annexation agreements
Memoranda of agreement and development agreements
Design/build lease financing
Special legislation for significant investment

Representative Experience

Represented ZF North America with negotiation and documentation of state and local incentives and bond financing matters in its $350 million, 900-job investment in Laurens County, South Carolina.
Represented one of the world’s largest companies in securing legislative approval for one of the largest economic incentives package in North Carolina history, resulting in more than a $1 billion investment in a data center.
Represented ReVenture Park in the passage of the North Carolina Cleanfields Act to encourage investment in and remediation of a Brownfields site to create a renewable energy park.
Represented a foreign manufacturer with its $150 million capital investment in South Carolina, which involved the negotiation of a complex enhanced fee-in-lieu of tax arrangement, special source revenue credits, acquisition of real estate, and other state and local economic development incentives.
Represented Tognum America (formerly MTU Detroit Diesel), a global manufacturer of off-highway engines, with its $45 million capital investment in South Carolina and $40 million expansion, which involved the negotiation of state and county economic development incentives and the acquisition of an existing manufacturing facility.
Represented a German manufacturer with its $8 million capital investment in North Carolina that involved negotiation of state and local incentives.
Represented a foreign automotive manufacturer with its $347 million capital investment in South Carolina, which involved the negotiation of various state and local incentives.
Represented a foreign automotive component manufacturer with its $300 million capital investment in South Carolina, which involved the negotiation of a revitalization agreement providing the company with savings on payroll taxes as well as a fee-in-lieu of tax arrangement.
Represented a German manufacturer of pharmaceutical equipment with investment project in North Carolina.
Represented a global aerospace parts manufacturer with its $5 million capital investment in South Carolina, which involved the negotiation of a fee-in-lieu of tax arrangement and designation of the project as part of a multi-county park.
Represented a large company with its $500 million investment in three biomass power plants in North Carolina. Our work included drafting and shepherding renewable energy legislation, working with the state Utilities Commission on rulemaking, assisting the client with the negotiation of local incentives, and handling the land use and zoning matters for the sites.
Represented Daimler Trucks of North America (formerly Freightliner) in its search to relocate a portion of its executive operations from Portland, Oregon, to the greater Charlotte area. For the North Carolina portion of the search, Parker Poe assisted Daimler Trucks with the negotiation of state and local incentives, site evaluations, and the review of land use and other real estate matters related to potential sites.