MillerCoors Picks Chicago for its Headquarters

I am a little late with this post but MillerCoors selected Chicago not the Denver region or Milwaukee as its headquarters city. The company had previously signaled that it was looking for a "neutral" location for its new headquarters so this decision was not a huge surprise. Many jobs, of course, will remain in the Denver region. The key quote from their press release is below:

"MILWAUKEE (July 15, 2008) – MillerCoors announced its new corporate headquarters will be located in Chicago. According to company spokesperson Julian Green, the decision to select Chicago as a neutral location for our corporate headquarters reflects the need for balance between the legacy companies as we seek to create the best beer company in America. We plan to maintain significant operations in Milwaukee and Golden by making investments in both our breweries and locating the headquarters of our Eastern and Western Divisions and regional sales offices, as well as significant parts of our Operations, Finance, IT and HR divisions in our hometowns. In addition, we will continue to make major investments in civic, cultural and sports sponsorships throughout Wisconsin and Colorado. Milwaukee will always be the home of Miller beer, and Golden will always be the home of Coors beer."

MillerCoors Press Release Announcing Selection of Chicago as Headquarters Site


This makes it three high profile headquarters that Chicago has won in recent years: Boeing, United and MillerCoors.

The July 16, 2008 Rocky had a very interesting article by David Milstead about the MillerCoors decision which explained that the Denver Region and Colorado do not focus on providing large tax incentives to specific employers making location decisions. Instead, the Colorado/Denver strategy is to emphasize the state and region's overall low cost tax structure and other factors such as quality of life and the area's highly educated workforce.

Its interesting to note from the article that the State of Illinois and City of Chicago offered MillerCoors a tax credit/incentive package estimated to be worth $20 million to offset their relatively high real estate and corporate income taxes.