By David Cruz
Correspondent
Camden Mayor Dana Redd is a front-row regular at the state Economic Development Authority meetings. Since last year’s Economic Opportunity Act, the EDA has made more than half a billion dollars in tax incentives available to companies relocating to the city. The latest? Subaru Corporation.
“The purpose of the legislation was to create economic development activity in distressed cities, with Camden as a particular target. This corporation is a national leader, an indication that this legislation is working the way it was intended to work,” said EDA Chairman Al Koeppe.
Subaru, which had contemplated moving to Philadelphia, says it will build a new corporate headquarters and bring its 500 employees to this property, currently owned by Campbell’s. The 200,000-square-foot facility will house sales, marketing, customer service and a training and engineering facility on the former Sears retail site.
“We’ve been growing tremendously over the last five to seven years in particular. We’ve seen our sales grow from around 187,000 cars to this year we’re gonna do over 500,000 vehicles, which really is the impetus for our growth. We’re growing so quickly, we’re really running out of space in our two headquarters facilities that we have, one in Cherry Hill and one in Pennsauken,” said Subaru of America President and COO Tom Doll.
Don’t let the gloomy weather fool you, the forecast for Camden is sunny and bright and Mayor Redd says her city has turned a corner.
“You can’t see my body in motion but, literally, I’m jumping up and down with joy. Subaru is a world-class company as you know and has world-class reach similar to Campbell Soup which is in the Gateway neighborhood and another incredible partner in the city of Camden that has remained with us and is spurring economic development and job creation,” she said.
But the cost of this job creation has been a source of some controversy. Critics say the state will pay too much to Subaru, which has only promised to create 100 new jobs over three years. Gordon MacInnes of NJ Policy Perspective says those 100 new jobs will cost taxpayers a million dollars each.
“Awarding profitable corporations billions of dollars mostly to shift jobs around New Jersey is not a job-creation strategy. It’s a feel-good gimmick, and Subaru is just the latest example,” he said in a statement.
But for a city that has alternately been known as the poorest and most dangerous in the nation, the news of more people coming here to work and the ancillary economic activity their presence will generate, is nothing to sneeze at, and the mayor says, they’re not through yet.