State cancels incentives agreement with Verizon retailer after one year

The state of North Carolina and a nationwide Verizon retailer headquartered in Raleigh have terminated an incentive agreement that was signed just last year.

In a letter sent to the state’s Economic Investment Committee earlier this month, Victra, which also goes by ABC Phones, requested that the state cancel its Job Development Investment Grant because it could no longer reach some hiring goals the state had set.

The incentive would have been worth up to $3.3 million over 12 years if the company had reached all of the required hiring and investment milestones. The state hadn’t yet made payments to Victra, and the agreement was terminated at an EIC meeting on Tuesday.

The main obstacle to Victra meeting the hiring requirements, the company said in the letter, was its decision to move most of its employees in Greenville to Raleigh, as part of a consolidation of its workforce. The JDIG agreement required the company to create dozens of jobs in Greenville.

“Victra respectfully requests consent of the EIC to terminate the agreement,” the company’s CEO, George Sherman, wrote in the letter. “By the end of 2018 Victra will consolidate all retained positions from its Pitt County office into its Raleigh headquarters. ... This decision was not taken lightly and was made after careful consideration of how to best align our business objectives and our long-term commitment to Raleigh as our national headquarters.”

Efforts to reach Victra were not immediately successful.

With more than 1,150 stores, Victra is the largest independent retailer, based on the number of stores, that exclusively sells Verizon wireless service, the Commerce Department said. According to the privately held company’s website, it was founded in Wilson in 1996 and had dual headquarters in Greenville and Eden Prairie, Minn., before deciding to relocate to Raleigh.

In 2017, Victra said it would add 250 new executive, operations and administrative jobs in Raleigh, which were expected to pay an annual wage of $92,000, according to data provided by the state.

By the end of the year the company expects to have 450 employees in North Carolina, as it consolidates employees to Raleigh from offices in California, Minnesota, South Dakota and Utah, the company said in its letter. “Although we were able to achieve this number (of Raleigh-based) employees within just the first full year of the agreement, the business requirements to do so did not allow for keeping our office in Pitt County open past 2018,” Sherman wrote.