ATLANTA — Mercedes-Benz’ hunt for a new U.S. headquarters started as an exercise in business efficiency and cutting costs, but ultimately factors like workforce and quality of life helped tilt the company’s decision toward metro Atlanta, the automaker’s top executive in the U.S. said Wednesday.
Mercedes-Benz USA President and CEO Stephen Cannon said the company started studying an idea for a move in the spring and determined by August to further explore cities.
On Tuesday, Mercedes confirmed weeks of speculation that it would pull out of New Jersey and move to the northern Atlanta suburbs. The likely location is in Sandy Springs, though the company is also scouting spots for a permanent home in Alpharetta.
Mercedes-Benz is likely to relocate or create about 800 to 1,000 jobs in the region, Cannon said, and workers will begin moving into an as-yet-undetermined temporary facility this summer. Cannon said it hopes to have an “iron-clad” agreement for a permanent property soon, with plans to open a new campus in 2017.
He said the company’s move is a “50-year bet” on Atlanta.
Cannon said Mercedes selected the Georgia state Route 400 corridor because of its convenience to northern suburbs and the “Gen-Y” workforce that lives in central Atlanta.
“It gave us the most balance and best diversity that we can find,” Cannon said.
Meanwhile, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration focused on the cost-of-business factor in its loss.
“Mercedes USA made one thing very clear about its decision to leave – the cost of doing business and the tax environment is just too high here to be competitive with a state like Georgia,” a Christie spokesman told the New York Times.
One might expect economic development teams from Georgia and other states to use that line against the Garden State the next time the opportunity arises to pitch other New Jersey firms.
In its print edition Wednesday, The Record newspaper in Bergen County, N.J., where Mercedes has it’s current home, reported some details of the talks between Christie’s administration and Mercedes.
The newspaper reported that Cannon and Christie met Dec. 23.
“(Christie) brought his Economic Development head with him,” the newspaper quoted Cannon. “He said, ‘What’s it going to take?’ And I said, ‘Look, this isn’t about us trying to chase the biggest pile of incentives, because that was not the driver.’ In fact, incentives, when you look at the whole picture, it’s just a small piece. We’re making a 50-year decision, and a pile of incentives in Year One, Two or Three over a 50-year decision doesn’t make a gigantic impact.”
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