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You thought taxpayer obligation to pay for Jackson Laboratory is costly?
How do established local businesses respond to it?
Why would Arthrex Inc. now be motivated to expand their business in Collier County with 200–300 new jobs planned to be created in the next 12 to 18 months and over 1000 new jobs projected within 10 years, without government or community support, while standing back to watch Jackson Labs receive unprecedented public accolades as the savior of medicine and economic diversification worthy of $500 million of state and local taxes and private grants?
Jackson Labs presents a lot of unproven speculation, but let’s look behind the scenes of real economic diversification going on, without any taxpayer support, in our community.
Arthrex Inc. located to Naples in 1991 with two employees, without community support, recognition or public funding and invests millions in medical research and development on its own. It has created over 900 high-tech, high-wage jobs in our community, gives back up to $1 million a year to over 60 local organizations and charities, and has a significant economic impact by attracting over 6,000 visitors who spend millions of dollars on local hotels, restaurants, recreation and retail throughout the year.
Arthrex pioneers medical technology that helped create outpatient arthroscopic surgery with over 300 patents and awards from around the world and is very close to developing a biologic treatment for arthritis.
Arthrex has historically grown its global surgical device business in Collier County to lead the community in economic diversification and provide career opportunities for our local population. I guess that is just not enough to deserve more than a Business of the Month placque from the Economic Development Council and Collier County commissioners as they focus their efforts on soliciting not-for-profit Jackson Labs with $260 million of state and local taxpayer money and $120 million in philanthropic donations, with limited evidence of commercial success, economic stimulus and tax revenue to our community.
Let me remind you that Hellerman Tyton once had a prominent company in North Naples that decided to lay off 150 of its local employees and move the company to Illinois due to our high cost of living burden, lack of skilled workforce and absence of local government support. Did the EDC or government step in to incentivize them to stay?
What about Defense Research leaving? And Shaw Arrow? Hundreds of jobs gone.
The departing list goes on.
Our local government and EDC does nothing to support and retain important local businesses that represent the largest employers and significant tax base revenue for the community.
Why is economic diversification difficult for our community? It’s because if your business does not depend on real estate and tourism, the cost of living is too high for hourly and salaried workers to live here and our community does not have a technology-experienced workforce to be competitive. It’s also difficult to recruit qualified people to our community because they can’t sell they existing homes and the cost of a comparable home here is significantly higher. You must build to hurricane-proof building requirements, tolerate excessive AC/electric generator costs and the risk of hurricane destruction wiping out your business.
Unless you breed lab mice and spend money that you don’t have on expensive lobbyists to get you a free ride to Florida so your high-end employees have a nice place to work in the winter, you are on your own if you want any financial support to keep or move your business here.
The larger the company, the greater the economic pressures from stakeholders and employees to move to an economic friendly environment to remain competitive. Local businesses like Arthrex that generate a significant tax-base revenue and employment for the community are watching closely as unproven, not-for-profit Jackson Labs gets unprecedented preferential incentives and accolades for promises of medical contributions and economic diversification as a savior for our community and our land owners in Ave Maria.
We get the message, commissioners. It’s time for Arthrex to consider following Hellerman Tyton’s lead and invest in our business expansion elsewhere where our business will be appreciated.
Our EDC and county commissioners state they want to pursue economic diversification for our community. Does blindly following what seven other Florida biotech cluster strategies have already failed to accomplish represent smart economic diversification? Why try to replicate and compete against what has already failed? With a half-billion dollars of risk? Isn’t Naples capable of creating its own unique economic diversification strategy instead of acting like lemmings over the cliff?
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Comments » 7
WillinSWF writes:
The County Commissioners are being very generous with the citizen’s tax money while insulting our long-standing South West Florida employers.
A model of things to come:
A similar situation to the Jackson Laboratory incentive deal occurred in North Carolina with Dell Computers. Dell received approximately $280 million in tax breaks after promising to build a printer manufacturing facility and create 1500 jobs over a specified period of time.
Not only did Dell fail to create the jobs, it built a printer plant in India (creating 10K overseas jobs) and then closed the Winston-Salem plant this past January.
In the meantime other North Carolina businesses were left on their own and many have languished.
Let this serve as a model and warning for our County Commissioners as they cut their deal with Jackson Laboratory.
NaplesRes1986 writes:
Naples residents should support Arthrex's position and so should our County Commissioners.
Arthrex demonstrates community leadership, values it's employeese and is sensitive to the interests of every tax payer in our community.
Arthrex is the leading model of economic diversification and medical breakthrough innovation already existing and working in our community, without the need for public funding and excess taxation of our residents.
arleyp (Inactive) writes:
Reinhold brings up excellent points that should not be ignored by our community leaders. Free enterprise is what has made this country great to begin with and Arthrex is an exceptional example of this in action. Attitudes and motivation are utterly different depending on the source of the money. Our leaders need to reassess their options and revise their plans.
Timh writes:
Are we all REALLY willing to take a $250M crapshoot with another biomedical company coming to Florida? The stats don't lie; 7 companies in the state that have underwhelmed us with job development while at the same time draining precious tax dollars that should be relegated for a more stable industry that can grow, not bleed us dry. When will the county commissioners pull their collective heads out of the sand and realize this is another pie-in-the-sky idea, instead of investing resources towards existing stable and successful businesses?
RecentResident writes:
When I hear of these sweet deals that one company may receive in order to incentivize that company to locate into a particular geographic location, I get very concerned. Mr. Schmieding brings up some very good points – to which I would add, what is it that Jackson is really putting on the table? Are they willing to guarantee repayment if they can’t deliver on the pie in the sky promises?
It makes sense for a company to look for the sweetest deal it can find. If they can find a cash source and someone willing to remove the risk associated with their venture, why not do just that? Too often, in a hurry to expand “opportunity” within a community, city and county leaders are too quick to offer too much to sweeten the pot and lure the prospective company in.
Let Jackson pay their own way in to our community and make their own business plan work with their own dollars. Once they have a track record of success and delivering on their promises, we can look for ways to expand what will then be an existing Collier County business. If they are not willing to do this in some form or fashion, I would ask why? If their business plan is so good and their prospects so dynamic, they should have people lining up to invest with them in order to fund this endeavor.
To our County Commissioners I ask these final questions . . . are you willing to cash out a CD or some other form of personal investment and put it on the table for Jackson? If not, why not? And why are you willing to ask all of us to do it for you?
ajm3s writes:
Stop the madness, Collier County is not sophisticated in these matters. You can surmise just in the comments made by the commissioners.
WillinSWF and others can offer specific debacles of government incentives.
If Jackson Labs is offered an incentive, why not Charles River Labs its competitor (for profit corporation). At least, there will be taxable dollars, or maybe I ask to much.
In a nutshell, this is ABSURDITY WRAPPED IN INSANITY. This is just tax dollars spent wastefully and with no foresight. NONE!
bioengineer writes:
If this project is so worthwhile for Jackson Labs and Collier County, why don't they raise private funds to expand? I agree with RecentResident that Jackson Labs should pay their own way in to the community with their own dollars. Once they have a proven track record of success, they can then submit a proposal for possible funding assistance.
Please don't burden the taxpayers again and, in addition, send an underlying message to proven companies like Arthrex that you are not willing to take care of those businesses that have been good to the community.
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