Officials disappointed by IEM move

IEM’s decision to move its headquarters from Baton Rouge to North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park has given local and state officials a case of the winter blues. “This highlights the need for us to aggressively market Baton Rouge,” says Mike Futrell, the city-parish’s chief administrative officer. Futrell says the problem is a lot of companies grow to a certain size, and then develop needs that require them to move to another city. “It’s disappointing to lose a home-grown company that started with one employee, that owes a lot of success to the Baton Rouge community,” Futrell said. Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret was traveling today and wasn’t sure of the value of the package offered to IEM, but says the package went well beyond anything North Carolina offered and included financial incentives and workforce-development help. But Raleigh offers many direct flights to Washington, D.C. [the federal government is IEM’s biggest client], and the Research Triangle Park has a very large scientific workforce—two advantages that proved impossible to overcome. “It’s definitely a big disappointment today, especially after a year of pretty intense effort,” Moret says. “I can’t think of another company that we’ve put more effort into from a business retention perspective.” IEM will begin moving its headquarters to North Carolina next month; the plan is to have the process finished by September.—Timothy Boone and David Jacobs