news-record.com

Scoop bumped into Dan Lynch downtown at Chik-fil-a this morning and came away with a few interesting points about the incentives request from LabCorp in Thursday's Board of Commissioners meeting:

• It was the first request to go to a public hearing for the Board of Commissioners all year. By this time last year, Lynch said, the county had seen four or five such requests. He's right. A quick search shows that FedEx Ground, Ozark Automotive Distributors, Precor and ConvaTec all went before commissioners last year.
• The county's competition is Danville, Va., which, like Greensboro, was a home to major textile and tobacco manufacturing, processing and headquarters. Both areas have been especially hard-hit in the tough economy and are working to recover as best as possible by attracting diverse employers and creating a better-educated workforce. Lynch said that he's heard that the Danville incentives package is about three times larger than North Carolina's incentive plan. When we called Danville City Manager Lyle Lacy about the incentives, he said that he wouldn't comment.
• Some commissioners who voted against the incentives seem to think that LabCorp will come anyway. When we talked with Commissioner Kirk Perkins yesterday, he said that the believes the company will locate here. The vice president of LabCorp who attended the meeting, Brad Morton, said that Greensboro's biggest competition is whether the company chooses to even open the billing center. In this economy, Lynch said, there are plenty of companies looking to make moves and open new centers, but fewer are actually going through with action.