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How a complicated, secretive effort convinced food giant Nestlé USA to expand in Solon
ANATOMY OF A DEAL JANET CENTURY
Nestlé USA has a sprawling campus near the Harper Road interchange with State Route 422 in Solon. Construction on a $53 million product technology center began in late June.
Move of corporate heavyweight’s pizza division to NE Ohio took thousands of hours of work, and a lot of local help By JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com
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ou would think it wouldn’t take a secretive, mystery-shrouded effort for a community to convince one of its largest employers to add some more jobs. You would be wrong. On Oct. 30, Nestlé USA announced it would move its Nestlé Pizza division and 250 jobs to Solon, where more than 1,900 people already worked at the Nestlé Prepared Foods and Bakery divisions, from Northbrook, Ill. The addition of $21.8 million in annual payroll was viewed as a big win for the state and region, and for the ability of the Rust Belt to attract a successful, growing company — the Swiss food giant Nestlé SA — with operations that are sought-after around the world. But achieving that victory was far from a snap. The announcement was the culmination of an eight-month community business attraction effort that was known as “Project Diamond.” On March 25, both the Greater Cleveland Partner-
ON THE WEB For a look at Nestlé’s impact in Ohio, along with a list of the companies that helped make the move possible, go to: www.crainscleveland.com
ship, Cleveland’s chamber of commerce, and Team Northeast Ohio, a nonprofit that is the region’s beacon for attracting businesses, were contacted by site selection professionals with Deloitte Consulting in California and told that Northeast Ohio was under consideration for a new regional headquarters operation that could employ 250 people. “Would you help us gather information for our site search?” they were asked. “They told us virtually nothing,” said Jay Foran, Team NEO’s senior vice president for business attraction, who would be the community’s point man on the project over the months ahead. “They told us they were a consumer products company and that they were fairly large,” Mr. Foran said. See DEAL Page 6
TIMELINE OF EVENTS ■ March 25, 2013: Team NEO and the Greater Cleveland Partnership are contacted by Deloitte Consulting for a highly confidential “Project Diamond.” Team NEO takes the lead on the project. ■ July 3: Deloitte alerts Team NEO that it will visit the region from July 16-18, with the focus on staffing needs and Greater Cleveland’s real estate markets. ■ July 16-18: Four Deloitte consultants visit. They divide into two teams: labor and real estate. ■ Aug. 15: Deloitte notifies Team NEO that Greater Cleveland is a finalist location and forwards detailed requests for information. Four communities — Cleveland, Beachwood, Mayfield Heights and Solon — are asked to respond. ■ Sept. 5: Deloitte asks the city of Solon for more specific incentive information based on the updated project scope.
■ Sept. 18: Team NEO and JobsOhio learn the identity of the company (Nestlé USA) via a conference call with a consultant. Grimwood ■ Oct. 24: Nestlé announces the Solon move to its employees. Nestlé CEO Paul Grimwood calls Solon Mayor Susan A. Drucker and economic development manager Peggy Weil Dorfman to announce the company’s decision. ■ Oct. 28: A job creation tax credit is approved by the Ohio Tax Credit Authority. Nestlé is also awarded a $350,000 JobsOhio work force grant and a $150,000 JobsOhio grant. ■ Oct. 30: Nestlé issues a press release to announce that it’s relocating its pizza division to Solon. ■ Source: Team NEO
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Entire contents © 2013 by Crain Communications Inc. Vol. 34, No. 49