Beacon Council cites 108 active relocation or expansion projects

No companies have sought tax incentives to relocate here under the Miami-Dade Relocation and Expansion Incentives Program created by the county commission last year and led by the Beacon Council, but the county still has been able to attract new businesses and foster expansions.

Recent announcements of relocations and expansions include A-Cap, Azamara, Citadel, Millennium, Hermes, Kaseya, Microsoft, Neocis, PwC, Winston & Strawn, and Zilch.

Although they did not pursue tax incentives to relocate, the Beacon Council engaged with most of these firms and provided “direct assistance and support in their [re]location or expansion” to some, a spokesperson told Miami Today via email.

The county commission approved the program last October under the sponsorship of Commissioner Eileen Higgins to attract new businesses and support those already in the area wishing to expand.

“What this program does, the Relocation and Expansive Incentives program, puts an incentive package together that could go up to two and a half million dollars,” she said at an October commission meeting.

The program provides incentives to companies that will hire a minimum of 50 new employees in the county within five years paying at least 150% of the average wage in Miami-Dade or Florida, which would be $89,361.

Qualifying companies can get tax credits of $1,000 per new job and an additional $125 credit per new job if any new hires received a degree from a public or private university or technical school within Miami-Dade and graduated within three years of the hire date, the Beacon Council’s website details.

The program gives an additional credit of $125 per new job if any new hire was previously unemployed, a returning citizen, or employed below the living wage rate with the immediately preceding employer.

County commissioners haven’t reviewed and approved an application under the incentives program since it became available at the beginning of this year. “There is no particular reason I would attribute to that, other than it’s a new program and we’re marketing it,” said James Kohnstamm, Beacon Council executive vice president.

As of July 14, the Beacon Council has an “active project pipeline of about 108 or 109 companies,” Mr. Kohnstamm said. Of those, he said, the council is engaged in deeper discussions with two Fintech companies, exploring whether they would apply for the expansion and relocation incentive or others that the county, the state, or municipalities offer.

These two companies aren’t yet in application phases, and the county commission is to approve this week a Targeted Jobs Incentive Fund application by a pharmaceutical firm from Long Island, NY, expanding and relocating its corporate headquarters to Miami-Dade. The company is to create 60 new jobs at an average wage of at least $60,000, according to county documents.

“There’s a much larger number [of companies] that we’ve certainly reviewed this program with, and we’ve discussed it as a potential,” he said. But “the recent companies that we’ve been speaking with have found other incentives to more align with their needs.”

The Beacon Council has been marketing the relocation program as part of its incentives toolkit, Mr. Kohnstamm said, explaining that “only about 10% of the companies that we work with in any given year are incentivized, so it’s a small part of the overall service that the council offers.”

For some companies, those incentives are important, so the Beacon Council has state, county and municipal offers to present to companies willing to move and expand in Miami-Dade.

“There’s clearly an increased demand, there’s an excitement about our community that’s excited about where we’re going, what we’re building, about the lifestyle, the talent base that we have here, and about [the] overall quality life that is offered to people that are looking to relocate to South Florida,” Mr. Kohnstamm said. “Those reasons are what’s driving our current demand and business growth, not because we have this incentive or that incentive.”

Kaseya, one of those recent companies already in the market, decided in March to expand operations in its global headquarters in Miami and considered those factors.
“Miami is a city of incredibly diverse talents, it’s a city of a lot of immigrants, it’s a city of people who have incredible talent [and] we wanted that,” CEO Fred Voccola said in an interview with the newspaper. “Florida as a state and Miami as a city are very business friendly places to operate.”

Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that total nonfarm employment in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach metropolitan area increased by 140,300 over the year ended in May. The Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall area alone gained 45% of the region’s total new nonfarm employment, or 75,300 jobs over the year. The local rate of job gain in the tri-county area was of 5.3% compared to the 4.5% national increase, the bureau’s Regional Commissioner Janet S. Rankin noted.