Northpinellas: IMRglobal announcement stuns city

CLEARWATER -- The news that IMRglobal Corp. is on the sales block shocked city officials and local business leaders Wednesday -- especially since just three years ago, the city promised $1.8-million in various incentives to attract IMRglobal's headquarters downtown.

IMRglobal looks for buyer as its earnings take a hit
The tech company hopes to sign a deal in 30 days with an international partner it says plans to maintain area jobs.

"I don't know even how to begin to respond to that," said interim City Manager Bill Horne. "We'll have to review the implication of what that would mean for everything we have done in support of IMR."

Said Mayor Brian Aungst: "That's a surprise."

"You're kidding!" said Glenn Warren, chairman of the city's Downtown Development Board. "About the only thing I can say is that I'm shocked. That's not even something I contemplated before."

After the shock, community leaders suggested that Clearwater will have to wait to know the true impact of the news. And they tried to sound optimistic.

Maybe the city could persuade a future buyer of IMRglobal to have their headquarters here, said Mike Meidel, president of the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Or if IMRglobal eliminates its Clearwater operation, Meidel suggested that the city could lure another company to take over IMRglobal's gated complex at the corner of Missouri Avenue and Cleveland Street.

"I got a call today from a company that was looking for a space for 1,000 jobs," Meidel said. "There are several firms in the area that are growing. And you could hope that a sale could strengthen (IMRglobal). You never know, it could be good news."

But Meidel was a bit bummed.

"It's nice to have a case history like IMRglobal, a success story to point to, to say things are happening here," Meidel said.

Wednesday's talk was in sharp contrast to the optimism surrounding the city's deal to sell IMRglobal an old city annex building on some polluted land, which was cleaned up by Clearwater. The city offered the company various waivers on fees and other incentives to locate here.

At the time, IMRglobal's potential economic effect on the community was touted to be in the tens of millions of dollars, in addition to generating an expected $3.2-million in taxes and fees for the city over 20 years. And that, city officials argued, more than justified the various incentives, which to date are worth an estimated $1.5-million.

But the city's expectations for IMRglobal had already diminished before the revelation of the possible sale. Only two office buildings, rather than three, have been built, and only 400 employees work at the site, rather than a once-projected 700.

The city released a report a few weeks ago that said Clearwater would probably expect to make only about $200,000 in taxes and other fees as profit from its deal over two decades, rather than millions.

Still, the location of a publicly traded company downtown was important to the city's ego, suggested David Stone, the president and CEO of First National Bank of Florida.

The sleek campus has improved downtown's overall appearance, dramatically transforming what used to be a dilapidated city office building and auto shop, Stone said. It has also has spurred other development nearby. For instance, planning is under way to build a 95-room hotel across the street from IMRglobal downtown, Stone noted.

"IMR has sunk a lot of money into downtown Clearwater," Stone said. "It would be a reversal of fortunes for downtown if they were to leave. I see their employees walking around downtown, and it would hurt if they were not there. Also a lot of them live downtown, in the new apartment complexes. I would hate to see them leave."

The IMR project sparked debate over how far the city should go in offering incentives to spark redevelopment. Civic activist Anne Garris disagreed with the IMR incentives. She said Wednesday that the news of the company's sale shows the city's vulnerability in such an arrangement.

"This idea of incentives is something that I haven't quite caught up with yet," she said. "We make these agreements, and then when the outfit can't deliver, we are much prone to shrug our shoulders and say, 'Oh well.' "

But Horne said he doesn't think city officials will regret the incentives.

"I think at the time, everyone just realized that we would have to do that to get redevelopment downtown," Horne said, while noting: "I wasn't here then."

Aungst said that he thinks that whatever happens to IMRglobal, the property downtown is still much better off than it was when it was a polluted parcel with rundown buildings.

"Some folks are going to criticize everything and anything," Aungst said. "But I think they're very short-sighted and have zero vision."

Back to North Pinellas news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Mary Jo Melone

Howard Troxler

From the Times
North Pinellas desks