New Jersey has lured another New York City company across states lines with a tax incentive.
The advertising and printing company Peeq Media was awarded a nearly $5 million package to move 110 middle-wage employees to northern New Jersey. The company is one of the latest taking advantage of generous incentive packages from New Jersey to cut costs.
New Jersey has estimated that the net benefit of the move will be $32.3 million over 20 years.
Peeq, faced with rising rents and looking to cut costs, applied for incentives from both New York state and New Jersey. The company ultimately chose to move across the Hudson because they were offered a slightly larger incentive package by the Garden State.
Space and rent were also a consideration for the company. Peeq, which does graphic design and printing for advertisements, currently has their headquarters on the second-floor of a building in Long Island City in Queens.
Part of their operations involves wrapping buses and cars with advertisements. In Queens, they need to rent a separate space to wrap vehicles with graphics. In their new Carlstadt, N.J., location, buses will be able to pull right into their facility.
Company COO Michael LaRaia also cited rising rent prices in the Queens neighborhood as a reason for the move. Rent in the Long Island City offices were more than three times as much as rent in the new 58,400 square-foot facility will be.
“We have to make sure that we’re making money at the end of the day,” LaRaia said. “That’s our goal and for us to do that, we have to look into better means of paying rent.”
It should also be easier to move product out to clients from the new location because of freeway access. New Jersey is within a one-day drive of 40 percent of the country’s population.
Peeq Media does have a second office in Manhattan, which is primarily used for sales, which they plan to keep there for now.
The move will be completed by the end of the first quarter of the year.
Middle wage job loss, like the jobs Peeq is taking out of the city, is a big concern for the New York City economy, said Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City. Wylde’s organization estimates the city has lost 100,000 middle wage jobs over the last five years. The trend could lead to a weakened city labor pool and a shrunken tax base.
There’s been a definite uptick in companies moving from New York City to New Jersey since New Jersey revised their incentives program in 2013 and Mayor Bill de Blasio took a hardline stance against corporate subsidies, according to corporate relocation consultant John Boyd.
Clients have told Boyd that the business climate in New York City has deteriorated since de Blasio took office.
New York state didn’t communicate well with Peeq after the company applied for a state incentive package last October, LaRaia said. Officials didn’t offer feedback on potential new locations, whereas officials in New Jersey showed Peeq a bevy of locations within 10 miles of the city.
“New Jersey wanted us and we didn’t get that feeling from New York,” LaRaia said.