Company President J. Gregory Bedner said Maryland and the District were never seriously considered.
"Half of it is where our folks are," Bedner said. The other half is that Northern Virginia is where most of Perot Systems' customers and competitors are based.
The lanes at Bowl America in Gaithersburg are off limits to smokers. The company said Montgomery County's smoking rules hurt business. Virginia is less strict.
(Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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"This is where you have the resources for the next big win," Ballard said. "We all talk to each other. The CEOs of all the other organizations are right around the corner. Heck, I know where half of them live. There's sort of a community thing. Today they're competitors, the next day they're teammates."
Thus, Perot Systems recently settled on Merrifield.
For the same reason, biotech firms flock to Montgomery County to be near the National Institutes of Health. Firms that do intelligence work are pouring into Anne Arundel County to win contracts from the National Security Agency. Shanga Hankerson, son of singer Gladys Knight, is opening his newest restaurant in Prince George's County to tap into the rising wealth of that county's black middle class, the same reason that Magic Johnson is opening a 12-screen movie theater there. Lobbying firms pay high rents to be close to Capitol Hill, and Daniel R. Wegman said he put his first Washington area Wegmans Food Market, in Sterling, not because of lower taxes or less-restrictive zoning, but because of the area's high income and education levels.
Those comparative advantages are not easily changed, although counties and states spend a lot of money trying. For example, Loudoun County officials are giving $6 million in tax breaks to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to open a research campus in Ashburn, hoping that it will be a magnet for biotech firms.
For the same reason, Eli Lilly and Co. is getting $2 million in Prince William County assistance and $2.25 million in state incentives to build an insulin plant just west of Manassas.
Maryland and Montgomery County, which is trying to create a media cluster in Silver Spring, offered TV One LLC, the new black cable television network, $250,000 to locate there, which it did this year.
"To grow a cluster, we'll change our tax policy," said Lawrence S. Rosenstrauch, the Loudoun County economic development director. The county did so to develop an aviation and aerospace cluster around Dulles International Airport and to encourage online services companies such as America Online to expand.
Some counties try to avoid handing out financial incentives because of the precedents they set and the cost. "Our board of supervisors says, 'Let's not get into a bidding war for business,' " said R. Talmage Reeves, Fauquier County's economic development director. "So we do not offer financial incentives in any form. I think it's good. When you offer incentives, you wind up bidding against other places. And my experience is you come out okay sometimes, sometimes not so well."
