| Company | McGraw-Hill/Standard & Poor's Corporation |
| Date Announced | 4/24/1997 |
| Site | 55 Water Street |
| Total Subsidy | $34.5 million |
|
$10.8 million |
| Promised Job Creation | 2,631 |
| Promised Job Retention | 4,010 |
| Length of Contract | 22 years |
| Competing Sites | Jersey City, N.J. |
| Conditions | One third of the benefits are tied to growth. Earlier in the month that this deal was announced, ING Barings had been granted a $5 million package, every dollar of which was tied to employment growth. |
| Notes | New
Jersey reportedly offered $50 million to lure Standard & Poor's, a
bond-rating and financial information unit of publishing giant
McGraw-Hill. Charles Millard, then president of the city's Economic
Development Corporation, accused New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of
violating a 1994 pledge not to poach New York companies. Under the
agreement Standard & Poor's pledged to keep all its New York City
employees in the city. S&P employees, spread among four buildings
before the deal, were to be consolidated at 55 Water Street. Of the many office deals in 1997, Standard & Poor's lease of 930,000 square feet (15 floors) at 55 Water Street was the largest. McGraw-Hill also made a deal for 447,000 square feet at 2 Penn Plaza in 1997, the sixth-largest deal of the year. |
| Corporate Notes | McGraw-Hill, owner of Business Week magazine and the nation's largest publisher of educational materials, also owns four television stations and the Standard & Poor's financial information service. |
| Critics | Speaking about the border war with New Jersey, H. Claude Shostal, president of the Regional Planning Association, says at the time of this deal, "It's a zero-sum game and you've got to believe the public sector could spend the money more wisely. You could put that money into schools and transportation programs that would benefit everybody, and the whole pie would grow. But it's difficult for elected officials not to play the game" (New York Times, 4/19/97). |
| 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 |
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