< Previous48 MAY 2021 S I T E S EL E C T I O N make, so it was a natural choice. As we look as well to replicate what we have in Denmark, it’s attractive to the customer base to have the dual locations. It de-risks the supply chain to have the same capability in multiple locations.” Talent provision was a key consideration. “I know we’re in a good place to have access to that talent, and a place committed to developing that talent as well,” Meeson says. As in its other locations around the world, being part of a regional industry group such as NC Biotech helps. “One thing I am constantly talking about is the need for partnership and a collective approach to the problems we face,” he adds. “We’ve created these vibrant hubs, and certainly one of the most vibrant in the U.S. and possibly the world is in North Carolina.” There were challenges along the way, says Meeson. It’s how you address and tackle those challenges that separates the wheat from the chaff. “ ‘Hurdles’ should maybe be the title of the last 12 months,” he says. “We’ve shown the power of what’s possible when people come together to solve quite big challenges we’re putting to ourselves and others. It really is the partnership mindset: Not just applying it to therapeutics and vaccines, but in working with everyone. When we have that, it’s amazing what we can get done.” Source: JLL Life Sciences Emerging Markets Index Metropolitan Area Score NC-SC: Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia 93.00 WA: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue 88.30 CO: Denver-Aurora-Lakewood 87.54 TX: Austin-Round Rock_Georgetown 87.23 TB: Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin 85.72 ID: Boise City 85.20 NC: Raleigh- Cary 84.44 TX: Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington 83.84 GA: Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta 83.33 FL: Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford 83.32 JLL’s Top Emerging Markets for Life Sciences50 MAY 2021 S I T E S EL E C T I O N INVES TMENT PROFILE: ABILENE, TEXAS In Texas, small doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as it does in other states. Small businesses seem to grow larger in Texas, and small towns can offer more than some major metro areas. In Abilene, that is undoubtedly true. Consider the case of Hartmann’s Inc., which got its start in Abilene back in 1955 as a small engine repair shop. According to the founder’s grandson and company president, Alan Hartmann, it is still a “small company” with just 55 employees at its headquarters and manufacturing facility in Abilene and another seven at its Jacksonville, Florida, location. Today, the family-owned company produces precision parts for some of the biggest names in the aerospace, automotive and medical industries — like Johnson & Johnson, Cummins Engines and Emerson Automation. Hartmann’s also serves a few other local customers in the DFW area, including Boeing, Pratt & Whitney, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Aerojet Rocketdyne. Hartmann said that operating the company for nearly 70 years in Abilene has provided several benefits. First, Abilene’s people are skilled and hardworking, which has given the company a solid team to rely on over the years. Second, I-20 provides easy access to technical resources in major cities like El Paso and the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. Finally, “the city has been absolutely fantastic in our latest growth push that we’ve had,” Hartmann said. Abilene’s central location offers ease of access to markets on both coasts, the Midwest, Northeast and Mexico. With Interstate 20, U.S. highways 83, 84 and 277, as well as rail services by Union Pacific and Southern Switching Company, getting goods to market from Abilene is easy. In 2020, more than 122,500 people called Abilene home. Additionally, the region boasts a 19-county labor shed representing more than 140,000 people. The city is home to several higher education institutions, including three private universities, two public community and technical colleges and the Texas Tech Health Science Center — Schools of Nursing, Public Health & Pharmacy. Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene supports more than 5,000 civilian and military personnel and 8,000 family members and retirees. Room to Grow The city’s two business parks and available properties mean companies have plenty of room to Small Town, Big Opportunity by SAVANNAH KING savannah.king@siteselection.com With ample space and easy access to markets, Abilene draws companies to Northwest Texas. TOP: Abilene’s SoDA District. ABOVE: Hartmann’s Inc. Photos courtesy of Development Corporation of Abilene S I T E S E L E C T I O N MAY 2021 51 This Investment Profile was prepared under the auspices of the Development Corporation of Abilene. For more information, please contact dcoa@abilenedcoa.com; 325.676.6390. grow when they need to. Abilene’s next-generation industrial park, Access Business Park, o ers several shovel-ready sites ranging from two to acres. While the city’s ,-acre business park, Five Points Business Park, provides ample room for all-sized companies. Five Points Business Park o ers companies easy access to Interstate , with service by Union Paci c Railroad, and is fully equipped with electrical, natural gas, water and wastewater and ber optics for telecommunications. Additionally, the park is only a -minute drive from the Abilene Regional Airport, which o ers six round-trip daily commercial ights to Dallas-Forth Worth and two round-trip daily commercial ights to Houston. In , Hartmann’s Inc. had reached a critical junction. With several new contracts secured, Hartmann said the company found itself at the precipice. “We had to either grow or cut back,” Hartmann said. “For the sake of the company and everyone that works here, we said, ‘We’re pushing forward, and we’re going to be on the cutting edge of what we do.’ And that’s exactly where we are.” In early , Hartmann’s Inc. invested $ . million into its new ,-sq.-ft. facility in the Five Points Business Park with help from the Development Corporation of Abilene (DCOA). Hartmann explained that the DCOA’s hands-on approach to working with businesses has bene ted the company in the last year. “I’m very thankful for the vision and the persistence of the DCOA,” Hartmann said. “We were looking at a smaller building in Five Points. [ ey] said to me, ‘Alan, I think you’re too close to the growth. You can’t see what you’re going to need in the future. You’re too close to it.’ By the good grace of the Lord and a little persuasion, we wound up here in this magni cent facility.” Hartmann says the larger facility has given the company room to become leaner and more e cient. “Abilene is a fantastic city. Misty Mayo and her entire team at the DCOA, I cannot say enough good things about them,” Hartmann said. “ ey are unbelievably professional, and they’re here for the best interest of not only the company that’s moving in but also the city.” Business Friendly Reputation Abilene and the DCOA team’s reputation has been known to attract companies to the area in the past. For instance, when Prairie Dog Pet Products found itself ready to scale up, the company turned to the DCOA. Founded in Dallas a decade ago, Prairie Dog Pet Products began by o ering elk and deer antlers as natural pet treats. Demand for the product took o and hasn’t slowed down yet. Today the company is growing and is in the process of becoming a new pet food brand called Primal Pets. Scott Gordon, CFO of Primal Pets, said it was Abilene’s proximity to Dallas, large labor pool and the DCOA’s helpfulness that led the company to choose Abilene for the site of its ,-sq.- ft. manufacturing facility in . Primal Pets is currently planning to expand its operation by , sq. ft. in the next two years. Gordon said the company also plans to triple its workforce at the same time. “From a location standpoint, let’s face it, Five Points Parkway is right on the Interstate,” Gordon said. “It is a bene t. Getting in and out is easy. ere’s a lot of space at Five Points — the DCOA has a lot of dry powder. It’s not like you’re going to be competing with folks — at least in the beginning — for limited space. It’s Texas and there’s a lot of space around us. Not to mention the people — the people of Abilene are the kind of folks you would want to partner with when you’re going forward.” ey say everything is bigger in Texas, and Abilene’s small-town community spirit has enormous appeal for companies of all sizes. Dallas Fort Worth Lubbock Amarillo ABILENE Houston San Antonio Austin e people of Abilene are the kind of folks you would want to partner with when you’re going forward.” — Scott Gordon, CFO, Primal Pets In , Hartmann’s Inc. had reached a critical junction. With several new contracts secured, e people of Abilene are the e people of Abilene are the e people of In , Hartmann’s Inc. had reached a critical junction. With several new contracts secured, Hartmann said the company found itself at the precipice. “We had to either grow or 52 MAY 2021 S I T E SE L E C T I ON If you’re in economic development in a “water stressed” region of the country, you might want to know about a movement that’s afoot in Cleveland, Ohio. Leaders of an eff ort to leverage Lake Erie for big-ticket investment want your heavy manufacturers. And they’re coming for them. e group behind an aggressive marketing campaign is composed of members of the Cleveland Partnership, Cuyahoga County government and the Cleveland Water Alliance (CWA), a non-profi t that supports scaling up of the region’s water related industries. Its research, conducted during , identifi ed heavy users of water — chemicals, rubber, metals, plastics and food manufacturers — as good fi ts for Lake Erie’s freshwater abundance. “ en we did a deep dive on where water stress is happening and why,” says Bryan Stubbs, CWA’S executive director and president. Using map overlays, research analysts identifi ed up to companies for potential outreach. Stubbs tells Site Selection the initial target states are Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. “From an industrial standpoint, water used to be kind of a throwaway item, but that world has defi nitely changed,” says Stubbs. “It’s not just the availability of water or the cost of water, but the reliability of water that has just really ratcheted up some of those corporate pain points. “If you did a Google search for ‘California’ and ‘drought,’ you’d probably see articles this month,” Stubbs says. “But that’s low-hanging fruit. We look at Houston and what they’re going through with hurricanes. We’re looking at Florida in terms of saltwater intrusion into their groundwater. We started to see that this isn’t just about ‘drought,’ but a whole variety of water challenges that we don’t have.” Under a pilot phase of the project that’s just W A TER SUPPL Y Could This Be The Dawn of by GARY DAUGHTERS gary.daughters@siteselection.com Lake Erie’s fresh water can be a boon to manufacturing. SOURCE: StudioThink The Dawn of The Water Belt? S I T E SE L E C T ION MAY 2021 53 being launched, says Stubbs, Greater Cleveland Partnership offi cials are calling on companies and targeting others through digital ads with the ultimate goal “to get them to relocate because of their need for water. We’ll be collecting lots of information to develop a much larger, multi-year marketing strategy. We know we’re not going to pick up the phone and two months later, someone’s moving here. But we think that over two to three years we’re going to get some wins.” Seizing a Missed Opportunity Like Cleveland, Toledo to the west enjoys a Lake Erie location. Earlier this year, Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz spoke with Site Selection about the lake’s potential lure for economic development. “If someone wants to call us ‘Rust Belt,’ fi ne,” he said. “I like to think of us as the Fresh Water Belt. At a time when the country and the world are getting more and more desperate for fresh water, we here in the Great Lakes region are sitting on % of the untapped fresh water on planet Earth. at will be a tremendous strategic advantage to us if we can just fi gure out how to harness it.” Figuring that out has been the hard part. A somewhat hazy consensus holds that water, as a notoriously parochial commodity, has been hard to rally around for more potent regional impact. As parts of the Great Lakes region continue to lose population, it’s an asset worth seizing upon. “I don’t disagree that it’s been a missed opportunity,” says Armond Budish, the Cuyahoga County executive. “A lot of U.S. companies just don’t know what we have to off er here. I have to say that even sophisticated people, when they think of Lake Erie, they think it’s a pond that they can see from one end to the other. Lake Erie is humongous. We have to get the word out: Our water is fresh, it’s clean, it’s usable and it’s virtually unlimited.” Just maybe not fully “fresh” and “clean.” Last July, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned that excessive algae in Lake Erie “threatens the ecosystem and human health of a waterbody that provides water for million people in the U.S. and Canada.” e agency cited “recent years” of “record algae growth,” resulting in oxygen- depleted areas of the lake known as “dead zones.” Building Upon a Legacy To those with memories long enough, though, Lake Erie being pitched as an economic development asset represents a stunning turnaround. On June , , the sewage- and waste-riddled Cuyahoga River, which empties into Lake Erie, notoriously caught fi re. e shock of the event fueled an environmental movement that culminated in the creation of the EPA and passage of the Clean Water Act. It also had a specifi cally local impact, believes Blake Oatey, director of business development for the Cleveland-based plumbing products company that bears his family’s name. “Remediating the lake brought a lot of people with an interest in water into our region,” Oatey tells Site Selection. “We’ve come to understand a lot about water, and that has helped us in developing commercial products for the rest of the world.” Along with Cleveland-based Moen and Kinetico, Oatey is among the largest of some companies in Northeast Ohio involved in the “water economy,” which, according to Stubbs, employs more than , people. “Milwaukee,” says Budish, “bills itself as the water technology capital. We have more water technology companies in Northeast Ohio than Milwaukee does. If there’s a water technology capital, it’s us.” Late last summer, CWA received a $, competitive grant from the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration to test innovations in water economy. Matching donations from a local consortium of local foundations, business and economic development organizations gives the alliance $. million to fund four “test bed” initiatives in Lake Erie for new water technologies. From an industrial standpoint, water used to be kind of a throwaway item, but that world has de nitely changed.” — Bryan Stubbs, Executive Director, Cleveland Water Alliance54 MAY 2021 S I T E SE L E C T I ON “We’ve created a system through these test beds that we’re just standing up now that allows us to test new technologies directly with customers and take that information, rinse and repeat it, so that we can narrow the time getting products to market. That can be pretty lengthy. This is addressing what some of our companies say is a real issue.” Other networks are forming. In October, the Cleveland Innovation Project — an alliance of the venerable Cleveland Foundation, Greater Cleveland Partnership, Fund for Our Economic Future, JumpStart and TeamNEO — identified water technology as one of three key sectors that could provide a needed spark to the regional economy. That Water Belt? Maybe it could happen, beginning in Cleveland. Cleveland-based Moen is a leader in smart water technology. Courtesy of Moenby ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com INVESTMENT REPORT COSTA RICA200 YEARS OLD THIS YEAR, COSTA RICA LEADS THE WAY TOWARD THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION When I asked Holly Sullivan, head of worldwide economic development for Amazon, about places outside the U.S. where the company was looking to ramp up growth, she listed half a dozen places in the world. Costa Rica was one of them. “How we’re making those decisions is working backwards from the customer,” she said. “Where do we need to continue to double down on that talent opportunity and double down on innovation to exceed our customer expectations?” Amazon is on its way to employing thousands in locations across Costa Rica, with half of management positions fi lled by women, and over , employees working % from home outside the San José metro area. It’s followed up with the news that Amazon Web Services will open a new offi ce in San José to support the rapid adoption of cloud computing across Costa Rica. e e-commerce giant is not alone in its desire to grow innovation and exceed customer expectations. It’s also not alone in choosing Costa Rica as a place to achieve those goals. In its Impact Report, released this spring, CINDE — the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency — announced its fi fth straight record year for job creation, having welcomed , new jobs from investors such as AstraZeneca, IBM and Samtec. ose jobs arrived via projects, of which were fi rst-time Costa Rica investors. at means repeat investors. Among the sources of job growth are Coca- Cola and Sykes in the Northern Pacifi c region; Firestone in Turrialba; Del Monte in the Southern Region; Panduit in the Western Region; and Yellow Pallets, Cocojo and APM Terminals in the Atlantic. e companies’ countries of origin span the globe: Of the new entries, of them came from non-traditional origins representing diff erent countries such as Japan, Denmark, France, Germany, India, the UK and Bosnia and Herzegovina. ose investors are likely to stick around and grow for a while: e companies supported by CINDE have seen continuous employment growth that in reached , jobs, with more than , of them in services, and , jobs in the fast-growing life sciences sector. “Over the years, Costa Rica has become the destination par excellence for nearshoring,” said CINDE Managing Director Jorge Sequeira, noting that manufacturing didn’t skip a beat either. “Our position was reaffi rmed during the pandemic thanks to a joint public-private eff ort that INTRODUCTION 56 MAY 2021 S I T E S EL E C T I O N Photo: Getty Images S I T E S E L E C T I O N MAY 2021 57 S I T E S E L E C T I O N MAY 2021 57 led to an agile and effi cient response to ensure business continuity. e country’s connectivity platform was put to the test and % of service companies showed that they were able to operate % remotely within a matter of days — while still enjoying the benefi ts of the free trade zone.” at amounted to , people working from home. e ability to do that was helped by a modern legal framework that allowed remote work implementation across multinational companies in a record time, and increased mobile penetration reached % with % being smart phones which is above the U.S. penetration rate. Fiber optics also grew % between and . Costa Rica also was able to ensure business continuity and avoid business disruption. is response capability was headed by the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Procomer and CINDE through bi-weekly roundtables headed personally by the Minister together with over business chambers to address challenges, provide clear information and collaborate with solutions, a true private-public focus. “Assurance of this business continuity with a clear rule of law and openness to trade demonstrated multinationals’ trust in Costa Rica as their strategic partner for the new nearshoring,” said Eric Scharf, President of the Board of Directors at CINDE. Multinationals obviously are buying what Costa Rica’s selling when it comes to FDI attraction. It comes full circle when you examine what the entire world is buying from the land of Pura Vida. According to PROCOMER, Costa Rica closed with more than $. billion in goods exports, up % over for a new record, even as exports around the world dropped by .%. Leading the way were an % jump in precision and medical equipment exports (which represented % of exported goods), a % increase in exports of corporate services and a % increase in ITC services exports. Meeting Corporate SDG Goals e nation’s success isn’t measured in numbers alone. In addition to being saluted among the Global Best to Invest investment promotion agencies in this publication for several years CINDE was also voted the world’s best IPA by the International Trade Centre’s comparative evaluation model, and received special recognition from the United Nations for mainstreaming gender in investment promotion. Equality is one of elements within Costa Rica´s diff erentiation approach to investment based on “People, Planet, Prosperity” — and its impact to contribute to the corporations’ ESG goals. CINDE’s results reinforce Costa Rica’s contribution and compliance with the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations, and CINDE reports its results’ impact on four main SDGs: Decent Work; Gender Equality; Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; and Quality Education. “Costa Rica’s commitment to sustainability is our fl agship to develop the right conditions for multinational companies that are looking to invest with purpose,” says Jorge Sequeira. No wonder more than members of RE, an international initiative that brings together more than infl uential businesses committed to % renewable energy, have invested in Costa Rica. In approving in March a $. billion arrangement to support Costa Rica’s recovery and stabilization from the economic damage caused by the COVID- pandemic, the International Monetary Fund talked to Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado Quesada about innovation and climate change mitigation being part of the country’s new economic program. “Boosting productivity requires setting the right conditions for domestic companies to thrive, improving the regulatory framework, and reinforcing our commitment to trade and foreign direct investment, to help companies integrate in global value chains,” the president said. “Competitiveness will also be boosted by stimulating innovation, including among small and medium-sized enterprises, and by reducing infrastructure bottlenecks. We will rely on public-private partnerships to rapidly increase the quality of our road network, and we will also strengthen our digital infrastructure.” But in Costa Rica — as many say in the U.S. — it’s human infrastructure that will prove to be the strongest girder for prosperity. “ ere is an increasing demand for professionals in services, science and technology globally that academic institutions are not managing to fulfi ll,” the president told the IMF. “We recently approved legislation to strengthen and modernize the National Institute of Learning, so as to better prepare for the fourth industrial revolution. It couldn’t come at a better time, as this year, on September , Costa Rica will celebrate the bicentennial of its independence. e recent success and forthcoming growth spotlighted in the following pages will make that celebration all the sweeter. Adam Bruns Managing Editor, Site Selection magazine Free Trade Zones purchased $2.3 billion locally in 2019, up from $1.5 billion in 2015, gaining greater e ciencies in supply.Next >