Why @NestleUSA is relocating its headquarters from California to Virginia

(This was originally posted on the Empoprise-BI Facebook page.)

So, as Trevor Carpenter noted, The Federalist Papers shared a Conservative Tribune post that was sourced from an LA Newspaper Group article (in this case, from the San Gabriel Valley Tribune).

Yeah, I like to get to the...um, primary sources. (More about sources in a minute.)

In a sense, this story about the relocation of Nestle's headquarters from California to Virginia is the story of two government approaches - that of the state of Virginia (along with Arlington County, the county where I grew up), and the city of Glendale, California (and, by extension, Los Angeles County and the state of California).

Virginia and Arlington:

The Washington Post reports the state of Virginia is offering $10 million in cash grants to Nestlé, including $6 million as a Commonwealth Opportunity Fund and $4 million from a Virginia Economic Development Incentive Grant. Arlington County is offering another $6 million in incentives as well as additional money for relocation assistance and training of new employees.

Glendale:

Darlene Sanchez, Glendale’s deputy director of community development, said the city didn’t hear of the pending move until early Wednesday.

“We found out on the news like everyone else, but it wasn’t a big surprise,” she said. “When they did their most recent lease extension we knew there was a likelihood that this could happen. But we have our Verdugo Jobs Center here to help get these people back on track.”...

The city is sorry to see Nestlé USA go, Sanchez said, but it views the company’s departure as an opportunity.

“We just completed a study two weeks ago, which shows that we have more than 1,000 businesses in Glendale that are tech-focused,” she said. “We’d like to see some more co-working space that would cater to this burgeoning technology industry that has organically grown here.”

So Virginia is throwing $16 million at Nestle, while California tells Nestle not to let the door hit them on the way out.

Of course, I myself am part of the problem, because I'm not business friendly. Speaking of organic, Nestle signed a sweetheart deal years ago with the U.S. Forest Service to take millions of dollars of water out of the San Bernardino National Forest at minimal charge. Now perhaps you haven't seen Nestle Water on your shelves, but you've seen Arrowhead water. Yup, that comes from my national forest.

Perhaps if I just agreed to let Nestle take all that water, and cut down all the trees (that's a joke - there are hardly any trees in the National Forest because of the elevation) in the National Forest to boot, they would have stayed here.

But then again, perhaps my friends in Arlington will have their own troubles when Nestle gets to their Rosslyn headquarters and starts draining water out of the Potomac.

And I recall one church in nearby Alexandria, Virginia that frowned on the use of Nestle products years ago - that whole baby formula thing, you know. If any of the people from that church are still around, perhaps they'll want to impose a $17 million penalty on Nestle to recoup the $16 million in losses.

San Gabriel Valley Tribune, "Why Nestlé USA is moving 1,200 jobs, and its HQ, out of Glendale"