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BIG FOREST: The courtship of Sierra Nevada

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Mills River. [PHOTO BY PAULA ROBERTS]

By Bill Moss, Published: April 7, 2014

PART 5: Picking a travel squad
In a competitive economic development hunt, a recruiter never gets overconfident.
Even-keeled on the outside, whatever anxiety and excitement he felt inside, Tate continued to push the project.
Sierra Nevada invited the Henderson County team to visit Chico on Sept. 25-27.
Tate and Garrett Wyckoff, a state Commerce Department industrial site specialist, began assembling the team.
"Anytime you're taking a trip you would sit and talk about who would be part of that team, who would bring value," Wyckoff said. "We got lucky with some of the people — (the Grossmans) being hikers and bikers. It wasn't always about business. There's a connection there with the locals and this potential new business."
Except it wasn't luck.
Tate could spout in his sleep the statistics about trips per day, kilowatts per hour and gallons per minute. But industry recruiting is both an art and a science. He had to get this right.
Mike Edney, the chairman of the Board of Commissioners, could not make the trip because he was on a Disney cruise in the Caribbean with his family. Wyatt and Tate settled on Marcus Jones, the county engineer and the manager of the county-owned Cane Creek Water and Sewer District. Ken Grossman, a trained chemist, would want to know everything he could about wastewater treatment and public water supply.
"Here's a guy who can talk intelligently about how to make something like that happen," Tate said of Jones. "But we also liked Marcus because he was young, he's a road biker. We knew at that point in time the family was into biking significantly. We were crafting a careful team.
"The other important piece of that team was Chuck McGrady," then in his first year in the state House. "He, like Marcus, offered tangible and intangible benefits, being part of that trip. It was good for us because we needed an elected official on that team. At that time we weren't positive alcohol legislation would have to change but we knew it was about to become a very serious discussion item. But also (because of) Chuck's interest in conservation and environmental issues, it was a good fit."
Besides, Jones and Tate were both graduates of the University of North Carolina. They knew Sierra Nevada's human resources director, Carrie Alden, had graduated from UNC in 1998, two years before Tate. The UNC alums could talk about Franklin Street and Carolina basketball.
The team also included Kelly Leonard, a commercial banker who was then chairman of the Partnership; Advantage West CEO Scott Hamilton (and Tate's predecessor at the Henderson County PED) and Wyckoff. Dale Carroll, an assistant commerce secretary, joined the team in Chico.
McGrady boarded the plane in Charlotte on a Sunday morning without knowing the name of the company he was to visit or what it made.
"Sen. Apodaca said it was something I ought to make time to do," he said. "They thought my background with the summer camp, the Legislature and the environment and business would be a good fit and that was kind of unusual."
Cooper picked up the visitors at the Sacramento airport that Sunday afternoon and drove them to Chico.
"We had dinner, didn't talk any business, and that's when you saw some of those relationships play out," Tate said. "Next morning we were picked up at 7. We met with Ken and Brian at the brewery, had a two-hour tour of the brewery, had lunch and met some family members, both of Brian's sisters and some of their kids. It was not just a business decision; it was going to be a family decision, and we knew those were important relationships. One had a one-year-old baby and one had a baby that was a couple months."
As soon as Tate saw the glass-walled executive conference room he connected a dot that reached back to March 1. The fishbowl, they called it.
The Chico operation impressed the visitors.
"I thought it was a company that really cared, that had a culture that was really focused broadly on being a sustainable company, and they really try to live those values," McGrady said. "I don't know that I've ever seen a cleaner factory than that one. I started to understand why Andrew and those guys thought this would be a good trip for me to be on."
Leonard, a Lexington native and son of an evangelical reform preacher, was a banker who knew how to talk finance and knew how to listen. That first night in Chico the team seated him with Ken Grossman.
"We all served different purposes on that trip," Leonard said. "Marcus Jones was the wastewater guy and one of the things Ken was really interested in was that process, so that worked out that Marcus went with us. He was great. Ken worked him over the whole time we were there, just riddled him with questions. He knows the torque on each screw-head he's got in that brewery."
Grossman is "a real mild-mannered type person," said Leonard, who is 56. "He's just a different sort of entrepreneur. We found out we were about the same age. He and I hit it off pretty good because we talked about rock bands and stuff like that. ... Chuck was sort of the legislative guy, to talk about laws. Marcus is a bike rider. Brian likes to cycle. So they hit it off and started talking about that.
"Andrew was our project salesman," Leonard continued. "He had done all the legwork. He's a very talented young man and he really showed that when we were out there. ...Everybody had a role to play. It was not scripted. We just all went and it all came together."
It was a factory visit unlike any other the team had made.
"It's not normal that you go off to an economic development trip and at every meeting they're offering you a beer," McGrady said. "I know at some point someone said, 'This is a helluva negotiating strategy.' "
On Day 2, it was time to talk business.
"We sat down in the afternoon and had a really strong meeting, everything from what's the site missing, what's it lacking, what are the problems, where are the hurdles and what are we going to do to fix it," Tate said. "We pored through all of it and agreed to present a plan the next morning to overcome some of those hurdles."
The Henderson County team members had a problem and they knew it. Tennessee and Virginia had offered free land or industrial sites that were already improved.
Tate looked up a chart from that day. It had a number, $16.3 million, that represented the cost to acquire and improve the site. Team North Carolina had to catch up.
"It's a puzzle," he said. "The trick in that is you match these upfront expenses with the partners. We knew we could tap this and this and this to get it down to zero. This is a good looking page (of local and state grants) to you and I but if your competitors have zeroes across the board you don't look that great. ... I was concerned at the high cost. But we also knew that some of our utility costs were substantially cheaper. We did a lot of work to figure out how we matched up; our hope was we'd show that you could break even in three years" based on lower electric, natural gas and property tax rates.
The team members felt they had done what they came to do. But they still weren't sure. The state commerce secretary had called in on a conference call but Gov. Bev Perdue had not. The team members thought the state's chief executive might have blown an opportunity to nudge the Grossmans across the finish line. They knew that Ferncliff was the higher priced site. They were bummed out.
"Just remember," a Sierra Nevada executive confided to one of the visitors as they headed for the airport. "With Ken, it's not always about money."