Company Liz Claiborne
Date Announced 2/14/2000
Site 1441 Broadway
Total Subsidy $8.0 million

Amount tied to job creation

???
Promised Job Creation ???
Promised Job Retention 800
Length of Contract 15 years
Competing Sites Secaucus, N.J.
Conditions none
Notes The city's largest apparel company won $8 million in subsidies from the city and state to keep its headquarters and 800 workers at its current location in the city's garment center. The package includes a state grant, discounted electricity and city sales tax exemptions for purchase of capital goods. The company said it could have saved money by moving its HQ to a huge warehouse it owns in Secaucus. The subsidies were clearly not the only factor in Claiborne's decision to stay, however, as the $8 million didn't entirely bridge the gap in costs between New Jersey and New York, according to the company's real estate broker, Newmark & Co. "New York is a better place for Claiborne's designers to be," said Newmark CEO Barry Gosin. "It's good for the company to have a serious presence among its competitors here" (Crain's New York Business, 2/15/99).
Corporate Notes
Critics
A note on sources -- or why many of these profiles appear incomplete. They are. Good Jobs New York compiled the numbers in these profiles from press releases and news accounts of the deals. Unfortunately, more detailed information on these subsidies is very difficult to obtain -- even though it should be readily available to the public. In many cases, neither the company nor the city nor state released certain information, particularly the terms of the agreement, i.e., the conditions which the company had to meet in order to receive the subsidy. It should also be noted that the value of the subsidy may not end up being equal to the value estimated at the time of the agreement. And it should not be assumed that the actual number of jobs retained and created will be the same as the numbers predicted.

Because the public deserves easy access to information about how taxpayer dollars are being spent, Good Jobs New York will update these profiles as we uncover more information.

Good Jobs New York  - May 25, 2001