Newell Rubbermaid Inc., a global marketer of consumer products with sales of nearly $7 billion, announced in early February that it selected Atlanta as the location for its new corporate headquarters and training center.

Initially, the new facility will provide space for about 60 senior executives and support staff currently based at several locations throughout the United States. The facility will have the capacity to accommodate additional corporate staffing in the future.

“They’ll probably hire a couple hundred people in the short term,” said Hans Gant, senior vice president for economic development with the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. “Long term, that could grow to 800 to 1,000 jobs.”

The facility will include a world class training center and state-of-the-art communication capabilities and will be used extensively for the company’s Phoenix program and breakthrough leadership training. When it is fully operational, Newell Rubbermaid estimates that this new headquarters and training center will bring thousands of employees and visitors annually to Atlanta.

“We believe this new facility will play an important role in preparing our executive team and future company leaders to drive our business to its fullest potential,” said Joseph Galli, CEO of Newell Rubbermaid.

The concept of a new corporate headquarters and training center is an important element of the company’s vision to promote a collaborative culture and to excel in training and leadership development.

The company is exploring both existing facilities and new sites in the greater Atlanta area and expects occupancy to begin the later half of 2004. The centralized corporate functions will remain at the company’s present location in Freeport and are unrelated to the Atlanta headquarters.

During the past year, the company evaluated many locations and entered into discussions with several state governments and municipalities. After thorough consideration, the company selected Atlanta because of the proximity to customers and company locations, exceptional transportation access, good quality of life and affordability.

“Atlanta won in a very competitive process with its projected growth, living environment, climate, location and education opportunities,” Galli said. “We think we made a terrific decision and our employees are delighted.”

This marks the 13th Fortune 500 — and 26th Fortune 1,000 — company to make their headquarters in the Atlanta metropolitan area, according to Gant.

“Rubbermaid’s decision to relocate its headquarters here helps solidify and validate the image of Atlanta as truly global headquarters location,” Gant said. “We continue to attract small- to mid-size company headquarters. This makes 40 company headquarters that have relocated to Atlanta in the past 12 months. During the last six years, more than 336 company headquarters have located here.”

Deutsche Bank Shows How Birds of a Feather Flock Together

Not surprisingly, America’s largest cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, etc. — continue to attract the lion’s share of corporate headquarters, particularly among Fortune 500 companies.

Companies put their headquarters in these locations for very specific reasons — transportation access, quality of life, educated work force, clustering with similar companies, just to name a few — and those reasons remain valid, even in the face of disasters such as befell New York City.

Prior to September 11, 2001, Deutsche Bank maintained downtown offices totaling 1.8 million square feet at 4 World Trade Center and at 130 Liberty St., in addition to offices in midtown. 4 WTC was destroyed during the terrorist attacks, and 130 Liberty suffered extensive damage, forcing the bank to move employees to other locations.

However, the site selection factors that originally put them in lower Manhattan remain compelling. Consequently, Deutsche Bank made the decision to move its U.S. headquarters and 5,500 employees back to Lower Manhattan, a commitment that will help to rebuild the area’s economy, boost local and state efforts to attract more businesses to downtown, and create needed foot traffic to help small businesses.

“Deutsche Bank has established itself as an important force in New York, particularly in the capital markets business and in the asset management area where it is an industry leader,” said Josef Ackermann, chairman of Deutsche Bank’s Group Executive Committee. “Growing our market share remains a key strategic goal for the bank. Moving into 60 Wall Street not only underlines our commitment to New York but represents another step forward in building our U.S. franchise.”

Deutsche Bank’s decision was the result of an agreement with the World Trade Center Job Creation and Retention Program, which provides grant support for businesses relocating to Lower Manhattan. Under the agreement, Deutsche Bank will maintain at least 6,500 jobs in New York City over a 10-year period. At least 5,500 jobs will be in Lower Manhattan, primarily at 60 Wall Street, with the remaining 1,000 or more jobs located at the bank's existing facilities in midtown.

The Job Creation and Retention Program is a federally funded assistance program targeting the about 140 companies south of Canal Street having more than 200 employees. The program, jointly administered by the Empire State Development Corp. and the New York City EDC, is designed to stabilize the job base in Lower Manhattan, restore the vibrancy of the downtown community, encourage the creation of new jobs, attract new businesses and diversify the downtown economy.

The program is targeted at large companies because they account for more than half of all the private sector jobs in Lower Manhattan, which in turn support thousands of smaller-sized businesses.

The grant terms of the program are discretionary but require the commitment of the companies to stay in Lower Manhattan for a minimum of seven years. The grant determination is based on criteria such as proximity to the World Trade Center site, economic and fiscal impact, early commitment, number of jobs retained, number of jobs created, and risk of relocation.

Finnish Chemicals Co-locates with Manufacturing Facility

While financial companies usually prefer to locate their headquarters in the midst of other financial companies, manufacturing companies — Boeing notwithstanding — usually co-locate their headquarters with one of their major manufacturing facilities.

Such was the case with Finnish Chemicals, which is establishing its North American corporate headquarters in Eastover, S.C., just east of Columbia. Finnish Chemicals, with corporate headquarters in Äetsä, Finland, operates at seven other sites, including the following four in the United States: Augusta, Ga., Delco, N.C., Eastover, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla., along with three international locations.

The new 56,700 square foot headquarters, laboratory and fabrication buildings will be built near the company’s existing manufacturing facility. The largest operating unit, FINNCHEM North America, is establishing all of its sales and marketing and administrative activities at the new facilities, as well as its proprietary fabrication operations that support the North American plants.

The company’s global corporate administrative and support functions are also relocating to the site, along with the global Research and Development Group. This facility will become the home of Finnish Chemicals’ electrochemical R&D effort worldwide.

“Our Unification Project is an important step for Finnish Chemicals in North America and globally,” said Steve Smith, CEO of the parent company. “We needed to select a headquarters site that would help ensure its success. We needed an area where the families from varied backgrounds and interests who would move from our other sites would find a good lifestyle, as well as a good working environment.

“We also needed a site that had a pool of qualified people to join us across the spectrum of skills and disciplines,” he added. “As a company with a global vision, we needed an area with the necessary communication, transportation and university infrastructure to meet our needs. Our operating experience in Richland County has been good and the area was a good match for all of our requirements.”

Finnish Chemicals specializes in research, development and engineering of proprietary chemical products and technologies for the manufacturing and sale of products based on these chemistries to a variety of industries. The largest end use market for Finnish Chemicals is the pulp and paper industry. The company also has significant sales in the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, food, water treatment and chemical industries. Its primary markets are Europe and North America.

The same logic drove Pilot Therapeutics Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company, to relocate its national headquarters and research and development facility to the Charleston, S.C., region. By the end of the year, an additional production and manufacturing facility location will be announced.

Pilot Therapeutics is developing a range of pharmaceutical and clinically validated over-the-counter (OTC) medical food products, including its lead OTC medical food, Airozin™, for the dietary management of asthma. Pilot plans a regional commercial launch of Airozin™ later this year.

Pilot Therapeutics plans to construct a headquarters and research and development facility in the Charleston region that, within five years, is expected to create about 100 new jobs.

The company plans to temporarily locate on Daniel Island until a permanent facility is established. This move will enable Pilot Therapeutics to operate without interruption as it continues to develop its extensive array of OTC medical food and pharmaceutical products, and plan the Airozin™ regional commercial launch.

For its production and manufacturing, Pilot Therapeutics plans to construct an $8 million facility and create about 80 jobs within five years for specialty crops processing used in the company’s medical food and pharmaceutical products. These specialty crops include borage, an annual plant primarily grown for its seed oil that contains gammalinolenic acid (GLA) used in Airozin™. The processing and production facility will take about two years to construct and become operational.

The potential impact of Pilot Therapeutics on South Carolina’s farming communities is significant. Pilot expects to grow about one-third of its worldwide borage supply in South Carolina, which the company estimates may reach thousands of acres if market penetration goals for Pilot’s products are reached.

“We are especially excited about the opportunity South Carolina has given us to accelerate our efforts to combine biotechnology and agriculture to develop products that fundamentally improve the human condition,” said Floyd Chilton, founder, president and CEO of Pilot Therapeutics.

The estimated return on investment to farmers contracted by Pilot Therapeutics to grow borage is fivefold to sevenfold higher per acre than for traditional crops like soybeans and winter wheat.

Pilot Therapeutics will contract with local farmers to grow borage to meet the company’s needs for its medical food and pharmaceutical products. Potentially, hundreds of farmers will be needed to grow these high value specialty crops within a five-year period.

The Need to Constantly Reevaluate

Boeing Corp.’s decision to relocate its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago highlighted the fact that, just because a location made sense 20 years ago or 50 years ago, it doesn’t necessarily make sense for the corporation now.

That thinking was clearly in play when STIHL Inc., a subsidiary of German-based STIHL Holding AG & Co., announced in early February that it will construct a 228,000 square foot addition to its U.S. headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va. The Virginia Beach site was chosen over sites in Brazil, China and Germany.

Stihl manufactures the world’s largest selling brand of chain saws, as well as a complete line of outdoor power equipment for homeowners and professional users. Stihl Inc. is one of seven manufacturing facilities in the Stihl Group.

“Our expansions and manufacturing investments are driven by our need to keep pace with growing customer demand for our products around the world,” said Peter K. Mueller, executive vice president of operations at Stihl Inc. “The highly skilled work force and dedicated work force in Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads has been key to successfully keeping pace with this demand.”

Stihl received a $500,000 grant from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund. Stihl also qualifies for a $700,000 performance-based grant from the Virginia Investment Partnership (VIP) program. VIP offers financial assistance to existing Virginia companies proposing significant expansion projects. The Virginia Department of Business Assistance will provide work force training services.

Columbia City, Ind., was not as lucky as Virginia Beach.

Italy-based C.F. Gomma S.p.a., a leading European supplier of rubber-based components for the automotive industry, announced plans last summer to relocate its U.S. headquarters from Columbia City to Jacksonville, Fla. After a lengthy review process of nearly every state located in the Southeastern United States, C.F. Gomma officials decided on Florida.

“We believe that Jacksonville will provide us with a number of benefits,” said Art Wilson, director of administration for C.F. Gomma USA Inc. “The region is a hub serviced by interstate highways and a dynamic deepwater port, both of which will allow us to deliver parts more efficiently to our clients. In addition, Jacksonville offers a qualified and skilled work force.”

Founded nearly 60 years ago, C.F. Gomma is the No. 1 Italian producer of rubber compounds for the auto industry. With headquarters in Passirano, Italy, the company has 14 plants in Italy, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil and the United States.

-Bill King is chief editor of Expansion Management magazine. He can be reached at BillKing@penton.com.