Features

Whirlpool:RE Takes ‘Integrator’ Role b y     J A C K     L Y N E Consistent, quantifiable processes and savvy outsourcing are two of the keys in the dawning rise of Whirlpool’s Corporate Real Estate (CRE) unit into the role of “corporate integrator” — a value-adding effort that bagged a prestigious 1999 Best Practices […]

PeopleSoft’s John Igoe Keeps People in The High-tech Real Estate Management Equation John F. Igoe knows a thing or two about managing real estate assets in the high-tech arena. As vice president, facilities and real estate, at Pleasanton, Calif.-based PeopleSoft Corp. (www.peoplesoft.com), he manages a portfolio of 1.8 million sq. ft. (167,000 sq. m.) in […]

A team of corporate real estate executives, leading academics and service providers met regularly through late 1998 and much of 1999 to craft a new portfolio management model that recognizes corporate real estate as a strategic organizational asset. What exactly is portfolio management in the corporate real estate context? Unless the concept is given some […]

If only the Y2K bug could be gotten rid of as easily as its counterparts in the natural world. It cannot, of course, and there is a palpable sense of foreboding surrounding the run-up to Jan. 1, 2000, when non-Y2K-compliant computers will assume it?s 1900. There is an even stronger sense in some circles that […]

Abstracts of recent major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world?s preeminent corporate real estate association. ?New New Strategies for Inner-City Economic Development,? Keynote Address by Michael Porter; IDRC New England World Congress, Apr. 26, 1999: ?The inner city is becoming the new hot spot,? offering location strengths, major pools of available […]

Those looking for immediate insights into real estate-related risk exposure tied to the Y2K bug can find extensive coverage of the topic at www.y2krealestate.com, a Web site operated by Millennium Strategies Group, LLC, a Denver, Colo.-based consultancy. The site lists building operating systems at risk and provides links to numerous articles detailing the various technical […]

It?s official: Site Selection?s editorial and graphic excellence now extends from the printed page to its cyberspace base. The magazine recently won awards in both categories in 1999?s ?Awards for Publications Excellence? (APEX) competition. Sponsored by Springfield, Va.-based Communications Concepts, APEX?s 11th annual global competition drew a record 4,900 entries. APEX cited SS for ?excellence […]

In the coming years, one of the most important service providers to the corporate real estate profession will be a modem-equipped computer. Traditional service providers of all stripes are automating their services where possible in order to reduce their own overhead and to quench clients? thirst for convenient, customizable access to services. As corporate infrastructure […]

With IDRC?s Corporate Infrastructure ResourcesSM (CIR) management concept garnering headlines in major media like The New York Times, new opportunities are opening to reinforce the association?s message to the asset management profession. Accordingly, IDRC has streamed a new video outlining membership benefits onto its newly updated Web site. In the seven-and-a-half minute video, Set Your […]

“If you?re in a pretty strong telecom market position, you?re in a difficult situation,” says Kevin O?Hara, the intensely alert, 38-year-old COO of red-hot Level 3 Communications (www.level3.com). O?Hara?s words may seem to fly in the face of conventional business wisdom. Like Elvis, however, conventional wisdom has left the building. The telecom business, O?Hara explains, […]

European Office Costs: Brussels a Bargain Brussels is Europe?s office bargain at US$29.62 per sq. ft. a year, while London, with comparable costs of $116.70, is the land of the big occupancy-cost spenders, according to CB Richard Ellis? (www.cbcommercial.com) recent survey. Of 17 major European cities, Rome and Vienna respectively ranked Nos. 2 and 3 […]

In the “Information Age,” telecommunications is as much a part of a community?s backbone as is its highways, railways and waterways. Now, businesses study not only an area?s physical and human infrastructure when locating a facility, but its telecom capabilities as well. And as telecommunications activities increase in the fast-paced global economy, the need for […]

Call it “physiostructure.” We might as well, since “infostructure” is now an established part of the site selection lexicon. In fact, much of this SS issue is a veritable hymn to how information infrastructure has dramatically altered where, when and how we work, transforming a 9-to-5 workplace that was as tightly defined as the facility […]

Common business wisdom used to hold that if you built a better mousetrap, the world would beat a path to your doorstep. But that was before people started shopping over the Internet and expecting almost instantaneous delivery of the products they ordered. Today, a growing number of customers demand exceptional logistics service from their vendors. […]

Aha, Michael Jordan, so it wasn?t the shoes after all, eh? It was the work space. Or maybe it was the work space at Converse, where basketball master Jordan originally assumed he?d sign for his 1984-85 pro rookie season. Then, however, he visited Converse?s offices and decided ?they just looked traditional.? So the fiercely innovative […]

If there?s one sure thing that you can say about utility deregulation, it?s that it?s complicated. Some states are deregulated, some aren?t, and some are in the process of deregulating. New services and products are coming online regularly, and new terms in the energy-shopping arena are popping up everyday — so many things to learn, […]

 SEPTEMBER 1999  SITE SELECTION  1998 TOP 10 UTILITY  COMPANIES   • COVER PAGE    •  CINERGY/PSI    •  DETROIT EDISON    •  ENTERGY’S       TEAMWORK       ARKANSAS    •  GEORGIA POWER       COMPANY    •  MEMPHIS LIGHT,       GAS & WATER       DIVISION    •  MIDAMERICAN       ENERGY COMPANY    •  NEBRASKA PUBLIC       POWER DISTRICT    •  OMAHA PUBLIC       POWER DISTRICT    •  PP&L    •  […]

Introduction: Origins of this PaperIn April 1993, the International Development Research Council?s journal, Industrial Development, published an article entitled “A Vision of the New Workplace.” (Industrial Development ran in Site Selection magazine for several years.) The authors were Francis Duffy from London-based DEGW, an architect who has spent most of his career studying and acting […]

In March 1999, distribution facilities giant ProLogis, an Aurora, Colo.-based real estate investment trust (REIT), acquired Meridian Industrial Trust, another leading manager and developer of distribution facilities, resulting in a global powerhouse with a market capitalization in excess of US$6.7 billion. ProLogis, with more than 168 million square feet (15.6 million sq. m.) under development […]

They?re living large in Alabama economic development circles, reveling in landing one of the year?s most coveted deals: Honda?s US$450 million, 1,500-employee plant, a 1.7-million-sq.-ft. (153,000-sq.-m.) behemoth that will rise on a 1,350-acre (540-ha.) tract in Lincoln, a small Talladega County town of some 3,600 residents 35 miles (56 km.) east of Birmingham. Undoubtedly some […]

With Europe?s economic revival gathering strength, the continent?s Latin markets are heating up, and crowding in historic city centers is sending occupiers heading for the hills. In Madrid, the business surge last year boosted takeup 20 percent to a 5.55 million sq. ft. (500,000 sq. m.), a high for the 1990s that has squeezed vacancy […]

Ontario Power Generation — North America?s biggest electric utility in generating capacity — is an invaluable member of the economic development team that?s helping make Ontario a leader in the chase for new business. In fact, OPG (the electricity generation successor to the former Ontario Hydro) recently won the Economic Developers Council of Ontario?s inaugural […]

One of the late 20th century?s most significant business trends, infrastructure integration is an idea whose time has come — and with it, a new role for real estate. Case in point: CIGNA corporate real estate?s (CRE) innovative Vision 3 Initiative, which merited a prestigious Best Practices Award from the International Development Research Council (IDRC), […]

[Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from a speech by Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard in New York City on April 15.] I am very pleased to be back in New York City. On my last visit, three years ago, I had just become Premier of Quebec, and I spoke about our goal of turning around […]