Lee County officials are backing a multimillion-dollar incentives package to maintain the employment of almost 2,000 employees in the county — the effort to spur one of the biggest-ever economic investments in the city of Sanford.
County commissioners on Monday authorized incentives worth up to $46 million in tax rebates for an unnamed manufacturing company that is considering plans to invest about $1 billion to build a facility in Sanford. The Lee County package is in addition to a similar $39.5 million incentives plan approved last week by the Sanford City Council.
Other WRAL Top Stories
Officials haven't publicly named the company, which is common with ongoing economic development projects. State law allows such deals to remain secret, and officials often refer to projects only by code names to enable companies to explore opportunities before making a major public commitment. The Lee County project is known as Project Paragon.
Economic incentives can be a strong deciding factor for companies considering expansion or relocation plans. And Lee County is facing competition for Project Paragon, so economic developers are putting their best foot forward in an effort to convince the company to choose Sanford over other locations.
“A project of this magnitude and dramatic economic impact is highly competitive, with strong competition from other communities around the country,” Jimmy Randolph, the chief executive of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance, told commissioners at a meeting on Monday. “We are cautiously optimistic that a competitive local incentive offer, along with all the other factors in our favor, will be compelling enough to convince the project to locate in Lee County.”
Companies need to meet investment and job commitments to receive grant payments. The company at the center of Project Paragon would need to invest $1 billion and keep at least 1,950 full-time jobs that pay an average annual wage of about $65,500 to receive the full amount. The county said it anticipates making 12 annual payments totaling about 80% of the property taxes paid by the company, provided the company decides to build in Sanford and meets the targets.
"Should Project Paragon choose to locate in Sanford, its proposed new capital investment will exceed that of any single project we've recruited before," Randolph told members of the Sanford City Council last week.
During a public-comment session at Monday’s meeting, Sanford resident Michelle Eaves asked Lee County commissioners to delay their approval of the incentives package to examine it further, arguing that the commitment of $46 million “deserves accountability to the taxpayers who ultimately stand behind it.”
“Residents deserve as much transparency as legally possible regarding the company, the project, its resource requirements and the protections contained in the agreement,” Eaves said. “I'm not asking the board to reject economic development. I'm asking the board to make sure this is a responsible economic development.”
She added: “We don't even know what company this is.”
‘Create’ vs. ‘maintain’
While local officials haven’t named the company, they have left a few possible clues in documents and public statements.
When considering incentives, Lee County officials and business recruiters have historically emphasized a mystery company’s promise to “create” jobs. In describing Project Paragon, however, county officials and economic developers have said the project would “maintain” 1,950 jobs in the county, indicating that some or all of the jobs might already be in the state — if not Lee County itself.
There are three companies that have more than 1,000 employees in Lee County, according to Commerce Department data: drugmaker Pfizer, chicken producer Pilgrim’s Pride and construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar.
Two Sanford councilmen — Chris Petty and Walter Ferguson — told WRAL on Monday that the jobs would be new to the city of Sanford, but they declined to name the company.
Pfizer’s main operations are already within Sanford’s city limits. And Pilgrim’s Pride told WRAL Monday that it has no connection to Project Paragon.
Caterpillar operates a Lee County facility that, according to tax records, is just outside of the city of Sanford tax jurisdiction. The company hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment about Project Paragon.
Randolph, whose group works to lure companies to — and keep companies in — the Sanford area, told commissioners Monday that his team has been working on the project with the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina and the North Carolina Department of Commerce since May.
Caterpillar in May announced plans to create 600 jobs at its Lee County facility.
A spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Commerce declined to say whether the department’s Economic Investment Committee was considering state incentives for Project Paragon.
“While we talk to many companies about their site location strategies and the advantages of doing business in North Carolina, we don't discuss those conversations nor share any documentation until the organization makes a public announcement of their site decision,” Commerce spokeswoman Patrice Gist said in a statement.