Roofing firm spurned in Sarasota lands in Tampa

North American Roofing Co., after Sarasota County officials rejected the firm's controversial bid to move to town, has instead decided to relocate its corporate headquarters from Asheville, N.C. to Tampa.

“This means that instead of Sarasota, all those 180 jobs will go to Tampa,” says Rob Sitterley, a site selection executive with Merit Advisors, which worked with North American Roofing on the move. “This is a huge win for Tampa.”

North American Roofing will receive at least $1.2 million in incentives from Florida, Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa, Sitterley told the Business Observer in an interview Tuesday. About $900,000 will come in tax rebates in return for 180 jobs, and about $270,000 is in a training grant. An official announcement on the move is expected to be released later today from Florida Gov. Rick Scott's office. Officials with the Hillsborough County Economic Development Corp. declined to comment in advance of an announcement.

The move represents another chapter in the ongoing Project Mulligan saga.

The saga started May 24, when Sarasota County commissioners, by a 4-1 vote, rejected a proposal to use $720,000 in public funds to help lure North American Roofing to the county. The proposal, under the codename Project Mulligan, would have provided the roofing company more than $1.5 million in state and local subsidies in return for 180 jobs over six years.

In rejecting the proposal, commissioners were partially swayed by a vocal group of builders, contractors and roofers who opposed it. That side's position: Using public money to woo a business in an industry — like roofing — that already struggles to find employees would be a bigger mistake than missing a corporate headquarters opportunity.

The vote, according to at least two county commissioners, was based on flaws in the process, not against the idea of using incentives, in general, to lure a headquarters. “Anybody who says this isn't a welcoming community based on this vote, I would personally push back on that," County Commission Chairman Alan Maio said at the May 24 meeting.

But Sitterley, a former state official who oversaw the deal that brought the Hertz corporate headquarters to Lee County, said in May that commissioners made “a big mistake” with the rejection. He says the project was misunderstood from the beginning, and at a corporate headquarters level, would have been a boost to other area contractors, not a detriment.

In the Tuesday interview, Sitterley says that mistake reverberated in economic development agencies nationwide the last three months, particularly in Florida and Texas. In Florida, he heard from at least 12 communities that wanted to know how they could woo North American Roofing. In Texas, says Sitterley, the state's economic development arm sent a statewide email to individual counties that chastised Sarasota County commissioners. Several Texas counties then reached out to Sitterley.

On top of that, Sitterley says he heard from site selection colleagues nationwide, wondering what happened in Sarasota, given the rarity of the decision. “Our group will never look in Sarasota again,” Sitterley says he told others in the industry.

After the Sarasota decision, Sitterley says he and the North American Roofing executives regrouped and came up with a plan to move forward. The goal was to still look for a place in Florida, but consider other options. When Tampa became a viable option, Sitterley says he had multiple conversations with Tampa and Hillsborough County officials to avoid going “down the same rabbit hole we went down in Sarasota.”

Adds Sitterley: “They assured us that they understood that this is a headquarters project and we wouldn't go through the same sort of hassle.”