Florida loses out on two big economic development projects

Florida recently lost out on a pair of major economic development projects, and, despite its strengths — weather, no income taxes, etc. — a national relocation consultant says the state has some issues.

For starters, Tom Stringer, managing director for site selection and incentives for corporate advisory firm BDO, says Florida is consistently inconsistent with who it wants to be. “Florida can be its worst enemy,” Stringer says. “Every five to eight years they change their economic development mission.”

Stringer is working with Electrameccanica, a Vancouver-based electric vehicle manufacturer seeking a place for its first U.S. assembly center, projected to have up to 500 employees. Florida was one of seven semi-finalists, but didn’t make it to the last round. Electrameccanica, Stringer says, is now choosing between the two finalists, Nashville and Phoenix, with a decision expected by the end of November.

Prior to Electrameccanica, Florida — specifically Tampa — was in the running to land the east coast regional headquarters for St. Louis-based managed care health insurance giant Centene Corp. In July, Centene chose Charlotte, N.C. for the $1 billion project, expected to create more than 3,200 jobs by 2032, according to the Insurance Journal.

Tampa has a natural connection to Centene: The city was the headquarters for WellCare Health Plans, which Centene acquired for $17 billion in January.

While Stringer didn’t work on the Centene deal, the issues he sees in Florida are common to other projects that ultimately eschew the Sunshine State. Loosely connected to having a consistent message, he says, is only giving lip-service to being more than a tourism and real estate development state. Florida has spent years pushing industry diversity, such as in manufacturing, but there are few concrete examples of success outside the Space Coast, he says.  And without that to show off, part of what Stinger calls site readiness, the state’s strengths aren’t enough to win major projects.  

“Site readiness is one of the issues where Florida lags behind,” Stringer tells Coffee Talk. “Sites in Florida really take a lot of work.”

Another issue? Incentives. Florida’s incentive programs have gone through several iterations, from multimillion-dollar budgets to now nearly nothing. Stringer says incentives aren’t the only thing — but could be a deal-breaker for site selection, depending on other factors. Centene, for example, could receive more than $450 million in tax breaks and other subsidies over a decade if it comes through on the job projections in Charlotte.  

Stringer says the relocation consulting industry pays attention to how states handle incentives — and how much they to dole out — and the chatter about Florida in that area of late hasn’t been good. “Florida has unilaterally disarmed from incentives,” Stringer says. “They seem to have like taken their ball and gone home.”