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Former school headquarters in downtown Boston would become GE innovation center

The Boston Business Journal reports some of the incentives the city and state will give GE could go to turn 26 Court Street into an innovation lab aimed at bringing good things to GE through collaboration with local companies and researchers.

Unclear is what happens to the city offices, such as the Department of Neighborhood Development, that stayed in the building when BPS decamped for Dudley Square - under a plan in which other city departments were at least initially planned for a move into the old BPS space.

Meanwhile, WCVB reports one city official found himself "choking" on the size of the incentives to GE.

The news is based on e-mail correspondence between GE and city officials that was released today.

MuckRock has posted all of the correspondence as a series of PDFs. City Hall had initially demanded $1,600 from the site for copies of the e-mail, but gave them out for free after it turned over the cache to the Globe.

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Comments

Still don't understand all the backlash GE is getting. More jobs is a good thing, no?

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We are a can't do city.

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I've said this before and I'll say it again...

First off, any job that GE is 'bringing here' that isn't already on the payroll is going to be facilities, secretarial, administrative, and IT staff. Very few of these positions will pay more than 50k. I'm going to guess that half of these 600 jobs will already be staffed by people moving here from CT, not "new" positions.

Secondly, if you take in account that GE is closing a plant in Norwood, and has scaled down operations in Lynn, the total number of jobs is a NET NEGATIVE. Meaning, we're actually down about 200 to 300 jobs.

How is this job creation? It's not.. it's all corporate welfare at its finest brushed under "job creation" BS...

If GE was bringing over 1k NEW jobs along with the 300 or so people moving up from CT, we'd be talking about something worth being excited about....

. o O (so we're giving now well over 150mil to GE, plus free rent, and other perks for a net negative number of jobs *mind blown* ) O o .

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be forbidden to purchase homes, rent or spend wages earned in Boston within city limits. They are planning to float a prefabricated building into the seaport district and put all the local restaurants out of business by forcing employees to brown bag it. We're doomed.

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We don't need to give companies or individuals millions of dollars to move here. People are doing it willingly. The seaport is one of the hottest areas in the country, so giving GE rent there for free instead of charging another company for it is just dumb. Boston is only behind SF/San Jose IN THE WORLD for venture capital funding. We don't need GE or anyone else. Want to move to Boston and take advantage of our excellent resources and well educated populace? Great. Pay your fucking taxes like everyone else.

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They would have moved somewhere else. At the very least, the state is going to recoup the grants given to GE via personal income tax on the 800 employees. The rest is just a bonus.

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are "fucking taxes"?

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Keep telling yourself that, and maybe it'll come true. If you believe that, I have some beautiful river front property on the Housatonic River in Pittsfeild to sell you.

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= $187,500 per employee. State income tax is 5.1%. To break even on the tax breaks they've received, GE would need to pay each worker $3.7 million. Even if you completely disregard the part about most of the "new" jobs (i.e. the ones that won't be filled by transplants from CT) paying mostly lower wages, and assume that each new position will pay something absurd like $150K, that still means it will take 25 years to break even.

Now let's talk about how much we're going to shell out in infrastructure costs (c.f. the goddamn bridge), and the opportunity cost of $150,000,000...

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That tax incentives are spread out over 20 years? If you did you'd realize how totally wrong you numbers were. And ps-they were going to replace the bridge whether GE moved here or not.

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Maybe all the employees will opt to pay 5.85% instead of 5.15%?

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Are you taking into account job losses in Norwood and Lynn? Would those job losses NOT happen if GE stayed in CT? Regardless of whether the downtown HQ jobs are newly created, or people moving from CT to MA, they're bringing 800 new taxpayers to the state of Massachusetts.

And you have no idea what these jobs pay. If they're moving their entire corporate HQ, that's quite a bit more than a $50k/year average. Do you know what Immelt made last year?

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/GE-Executive-Salaries-E277_D_KO3,12.htm

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You didn't read, you just wanted to jab me. So let me repeat it for you...

First off, any job that GE is 'bringing here' that isn't already on the payroll is going to be facilities, secretarial, administrative, and IT staff. Very few of these positions will pay more than 50k.

I'll rephrase it so you can understand this more... very few of these NEW positions will pay more than 50k.

I'm talking about "jobs created" Sorry MOVING a position here isn't job creation. It's moving people that already have jobs. Jobs created would mean NEW positions for UNEMPLOYED people (or people working elsewhere and not at GE currently). See the difference?

And you have no idea what these jobs pay.

I have a pretty good guess what market rate is for IT, Administrative, Facilities and Secretarial position pays and most, if not all, are being paid less than 50k.

Are you taking into account job losses in Norwood and Lynn? Would those job losses NOT happen if GE stayed in CT? Regardless of whether the downtown HQ jobs are newly created, or people moving from CT to MA, they're bringing 800 new taxpayers to the state of Massachusetts.

Why shouldn't I? GE is GE is GE. Whether it's in the Seaport, Lynn, Westwood, Pittsfield, or any other town across the state that GE has some presence in. It's the same company, same big conglomerate. Same payroll. So total number of jobs across the state within the GE umbrella is a net negative. Regardless, if half the jobs are imports from CT, that's still only 400 "new" jobs. Not exactly alot to balk about.

Don't try to say you're 'creating jobs' when you are cutting staff at other offices and putting people out of work. That is not job creation.

they're bringing 800 new taxpayers to the state of Massachusetts.

Keep telling yourself that, maybe you'll believe it. "New" is relative. See comment above, half of those jobs are from residents who already live in the state and are paying taxes. This is not "new" tax payers. And honestly, as slimey as GE is, do you think some of these execs are going to pay their mass taxes.. doubt it.

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I read what you wrote, it was full of half truths and conjecture.

The Lynn and Norwood jobs are gone, regardless of whether GE hq moves to Boston. The 800 employees coming to Boston will be senior executives making significantly more than 50k. In terms of tax revenue, who cares if they're "new" hires or CT transplants, they'll still be new to the Mass tax rolls. Of those "new" taxpayers, you have absolutely no clue what they'll make. The average GE executive salary is $175k, and the top earners make significantly more.

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Down -200? That means we're up 200! Yay!

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It's about leverage. GE being here means thousands of non-GE jobs servicing the HQ, collaborating, competing, etc. It's a beach head that firmly establishes Boston as the premier center for Industrial Internet. That's actually a really big deal. Imagine if consumer Internet heavy hitters had set up shop here instead of in the silicon valley. GE is making a bet that Boston is the place for the next transformation and they want to be at the forefront. A lot of other companies will follow suit.

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We'll see. It's a theory. It worked out that way for the mutual fund industry. Money managers are still in Boston, but much of the servicing part of the business has been moved to cheaper labor locales.

GE is a notorious tax evader. They have no interest in paying local, state or Federal tax if they can avoid it. I'd settle for getting them to pay 100% of their local property tax and get the $25,000,000 tax abatement back.

What's most apparent to me is the ease with which Baker and Walsh shower GE with $250,000,000 in "incentives" while depriving 54,000 Boston students of $32,000,00 that would close the budget gap without cuts.

GE is a crap shoot. Funding education so out kids can have opportunity in their future, that's fundamental.

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And it's over twenty years, and the city is only kicking in $25 million. To put that in perspective, there would need to be 26 GE sized deals to meet the $32 million BPS budget shortfall. As for the assertion that GE doesn't pay taxes in general, it raises two points:

  1. If they don't pay anyway, we aren't giving anything away.
  2. It's simply not true. In 2010, the year everybody likes to point out, GE paid $1.05 billion in federal, state, and local taxes. (http://www.forbes.com/2011/04/13/ge-exxon-walmart-apple-business-washing...)

Most of that is likely federal, but quite a bit will go to Massachusetts and Boston over time.

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Boston alone is about $150M before the office building part of the deal. The state is in for ~$100M.

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They are getting everything rent free and tax free. All this supposedly good corporate citizen stuff isn't altruistic as they will take further tax write offs for doing these things.So they get everything free, free PR, and even more incentives to never pay taxes for a facility which will generate future revenue for the company. This tech center will essentially allow them to have an idea lab and research center creating valuable new stuff AS A TAX WRITE OFF.

A small startup company in the city would get none of these benefits and get whacked with a hefty tax burden.

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More jobs is a good thing, no?

All it took is $25m from the city and $125m from the state to get those 600 promised jobs, for a price tag of $241,667 per job. If the city wants an alternative economic development plan, why not just pick 600 people at random and give them the same amount? Then we wouldn't have to get into the lost opportunity cost of having a tenant who actually pays taxes, and the fact that this economic "development" is merely poaching off another part of the regional economy.

I guess on the plus side though, now we get to talk about amaphorous and impossible to quantify things like "World Class" and "Spillover Effects". And all Bostonians know that's always fun.

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They didn't "give" GE anything. That's like saying we've been giving GE headquarters a 100% tax break for the last 25 years when they were in CT. If this deal didn't happen, GE would continue to pay no tax in Mass, b/c they wouldn't be here. That $125million is spread over a number of years, as is the $25 mil in property tax relief. It wasn't a check cut from the state to GE.

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It's entirely a lost opportunity cost. Your assumption that we didn't "give" anything to GE is based on the assumption that nothing else would go into that spot without a tax break. Maybe that would be the case in a down economy, but sorry, open your eyes and take a look around you; vacancy rates are extremely low, huge numbers of new residents are moving town, we've only trailing Silicon Valley in VC$, and suddenly we absolutely need GE? We not only gave them a lower tax bill, but we gave up our opportunity to have their properties generate taxes.

And we "gave" GE and its political allies the ability to claim that losing 600 jobs in CT and bringing 600 jobs to Boston isn't some sort of paper shuffling exercise, but somehow a major jobs creation. Which is just some AMAZING math. 600 - 600 = PROFIT!!!

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What other businesses were looking to move the headquarters to that location? If there were other corporations that would have done so without any incentives, then yes, that is lost opportunity cost.

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That whole area is filling up and filling in. Space in the existing renovated buildings is getting very pricy and very tight right now. If it wasn't "wink nudge blighted" and had been renovated two years ago like every other damn building in the area, it would be full by now.

Do you work near I-495, or are you just remembering The Channel fondly?

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not united not independent political movement by pointing that out.

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The city/state "gave" them $150,000,000 worth of tax relief and rent payments. Specifically, GE will move its headquarters to a building that otherwise would have generated $150,000,000 if it had been rented out to a company that didn't have a sweetheart deal. This is the sort of thing you do when you're Detroit, and you want to attract business to an area that is hemorrhaging jobs and money, because you're willing to take the short-term pain to build a long-term future for your city. It is NOT the sort of thing you do when your city's problems can be generally summarized as "we can't build fast enough to accommodate all the people and businesses who want to move here." Or, at least, it's not the sort of thing you do if you're trying to provide the best outcomes for your citizens--it's EXACTLY the sort of thing you do if you want to make sure that GE writes your political campaign a nice, fat check when the next election cycle rolls around, and you don't need to worry about the deal blowing up because you can convince get a significant percentage of the public to shill for you under the guise of "job creation."

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Where was this mythical company that was going to move to Boston and generate that tax revenue? Was Google going to take that space? Intel? GM?

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You clearly don't know the area.

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buy this building at market rate, right???

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So no taxes,

And the deed to a historical location believed to be the oldest
plot of land continuously owned by the City of Boston?

Daaaaaaamn Daniel.

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I just clicked through to make a very similar comment... It would be a shame to see the city give up the parcel it's owned the longest. Almost exactly a year ago, WBUR gave an overview of the history of 26 Court.

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Is it really a loss? Another parcel will happily take its place as the longest owned by the city itself.

Repurposing 26 Court Street should have happened a long time ago. It's prime real estate that the city has allowed to go wasted. BPS staff were given incredibly spacious offices. Much of the ground floor was used for computer tape storage, and most of the curb around the building was reserved for school committee parking.

The only worse use of municipal office space is the top floor of Boston City Hall.

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Only skimmed the docs, but I find it hilarious John Barros and Dan Koh call each other "Chief Barros" and Chief Koh. Too many chiefs, not enough (CAUTION: trigger warning) Indians.

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GE wants to buy the beautiful department of neighborhood services (former School headquarters) building in Boston, I think taxpayers especially those who own homes in Boston should have a say weather the mayor or city officials decide they should let go of this building to a corporate giant , City of Boston property is not for sale! property belongs to the taxpayers too, heck , the city of Boston reserved numerous much needed parking spaces to another corporate giant, will Boston sell all their assets , is it nessesary
to sell city owned property to corporate giants, just think GE employees who will start working at the new facility will come from towns outside of Boston, they won't be employing blue collar workers from South Boston, let's not kid ourselves , these are all highly skilled white collar jobs.

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Maybe they're just getting it in another one of those free-rent deals like their headquarters on Fort Point Channel.

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...Is more than the building would fetch in a sale. No easy solutions for that building.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2015/07/former_b...

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600 jobs at let's say, $150k average each = $90m / year in salary. I think that translates into at least $5mil State income tax annually, plus all the residuals (hotel taxes, restaurants, furniture, etc).

Plus some prestige that, yes, does come with a Fortune 500 HQ.

I am concerned about the income divide in Boston. But I still see benefit in GE coming and can't get too negative about it so far. .

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Should be taken into account when giving tax breaks, property and bridges to any company. There are more philanthropic companies we could entice to come to Boston, especially ones whose CEO's make less than $300 million a year.

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Can you please tell me what you're smoking?

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Regardless of whether you think its a good deal or bad deal [spoiler alert: it's bad]. GE deals to move to the city have made the city government look bad. I wish I could say it would have a negative affect on politicians, causing them to think again about providing corporate welfare. But you know what, nobody lost an office because of the Liberty Mutual deals either. So you know what... let's just drop all commercial and industrial taxes in the city. Why even bother trying anymore. Let them pillage us.

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Corporate tax abatement for corporations that are expert at tax avoidance is good for

  • shareholders
  • executive bonuses
  • politicians coffers

and bad for

  1. the public that wants to fund public services like
  2. well resourced public schools
  3. reliable, fast and clean public transit
  4. affordable housing
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