UPDATE: Mars gets $31M tax break to bring 483 jobs to Newark

NEWARK -- Move over, Amazon. You may not be the only buzz-worthy new HQ thinking of coming to town.

Mars Wrigley Confectionery -- the candy company responsible for sweet treats like M&M's, Milky Ways, and Snickers -- is applying for a $31 million grant from the state's Economic Development Authority to open a corporate center in Newark.

The request appeared on an EDA agenda set for discussion at a meeting Tuesday.

If word of Mars' possible return to Brick City weren't sweet enough for Newark officials, Mayor Ras Baraka welcomed Broadridge Financial Solutions CEO Tim Gokey and 1,100 of his employees during a ribbon cutting Monday in the company's new 160,000-square-foot space at 2 Gateway Center.

After Gateway's owner, C&K Properties, announced the move in March, last month Broadridge relocated the 1,100 workers from space in Jersey City's Journal Square neighborhood. Apart from occupying a hefty chunk of one of Newark's biggest office complexes and generating work for restaurants, dry cleaners, cabbies and other local businesses, Broadridge's work force will mean more than a million dollars a year in city revenues under Newark's 1-percent payroll tax, city and company officials said.

Matt Connor, Broadridge's chief financial officer, said Newark employees' salaries average around $100,000 a year, which puts the company's annual Newark payroll at $110,000,000, with the city's annual share of that coming to $1.1 million. That's $16.5 million in payroll taxes alone over the course of Broadridge's 15-year lease.

Company and city officials said Broadridge had been granted an incentive deal worth more than $20 million by the EDA. Aisha Glover, president and CEO of the Newark Community Economic Development Corporation, said the Broadridge move was the single biggest job relocation to the city during the Baraka administration.

"It goes to show you how committed to moving to Newark that they were willing to pay million of dollars in payroll tax," Glover said.

Mars Wrigley is considering locations in both New Jersey and Illinois for its new U.S. headquarters, said a spokeswoman for the candy maker, Alicia Buksar.

"If the state of New Jersey approves our recent incentives application we hope to create offices in both Hackettstown and Newark in 2020," she said in a statement to NJ Advance Media Monday.

The company currently operates from offices in Chicago and a plant in Hackettstown, and will continue its presence in both locations, she said.

"Regardless of the placement of our Mars Wrigley Confectionery U.S. hub, we will continue to have a significant footprint in both Chicago and New Jersey, including the global headquarters of Mars Wrigley Confectionery based in Chicago as well as multiple plants and offices employing thousands of associates across New Jersey and Illinois," Buksar said.

Mars is also applying for a second $1 million grant from the EDA for a capital project in Hackettstown, according to the meeting agenda.

Sources familiar with the grant applications reportedly told ROI-New Jersey the headquarters would be located in the Ironside Newark -- a 456,000-square-foot commercial and retail center currently being renovated. Upon completion, the building will serve as the cornerstone of the Mulberry Commons project, a development that promises to link the Prudential Center arena and Newark Penn Station.

If the deal goes through, it would be a return to Newark for the candy giant, which was headquartered in the Brick City from about 1940 to 1959, when it opened the Hackettstown location.

The news from Mars comes a few weeks after Gov. Chris Christie chose the state's largest city as New Jersey's bid for Amazon's second headquarters. That company has announced a nationwide search for the home of its new corporate command post.

At the Broadridge ribbon cutting, Baraka and other officials said they hoped that Amazon was paying attention to the move, which they insisted was one more indication of Newark's growing prominence as a tech hub.

Gokey, the company CEO, told the gathering that Broadridge facilitates $6 trillion -- that's trillion with a T -- worth of financial transactions every day, thirty times the $200 billion daily volume of the New York Stock Exchange.

"There was an article a couple of years ago that called Broadridge 'the most important company you've never heard of,'" Gokey said with a smile. "Newark has just become the number one financial capital on the planet."

NJ Advance Media staff writer Jessica Mazzola and Spencer Kent contributed to this report

Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.