< Previous84 JULY 2023 SITE SELECTION LIVE, WORK & PLAY with her husband Shannon since . Both of them are avid whitewater kayakers and mountain bikers and appreciate all that’s going on south of the state line in the Upstate. “Any improvements in trail systems that empower residents to enjoy nature and the pristine habitat around Saluda excite me,” she says. “Many people don’t know that there is only one other place on the planet — in Italy — that shares the ozone quality Saluda has, making its air some of the healthiest to breathe in the world. I used to say to my public relations clients that Saluda’s clean air helps my creativity … I think there is something to that. Quality of life keeps your nervous system straight.” Places That Are ‘Really Real’ Sox can see how the momentum of the miles of trail to be called the Daniel Morgan Trail system will connect with the downtown momentum in Spartanburg being driven by the likes of M Peters Group’s $ million downtown retail redevelopment and the forthcoming arrival of a minor league baseball stadium just around the corner from a soon-to-be-rebuilt City Hall, a new planetarium at the library and the location of the fi rst Black Lives Matter street mural to appear in the state. e baseball team, an affi liate of the Texas Rangers currently playing as the Down East Wood Ducks in North Carolina, could begin playing in Spartanburg as soon as the Minor League Baseball season. Diamond Baseball Holdings, the club’s new majority owner, would lease the stadium from the City of Spartanburg. e site is adjacent to the south side of town, a languishing majority-Black neighborhood that would be reconnected with downtown — “rather than being literally on the other side of the tracks” — with the potential redevelopment of an industrial cluster in an area known as the Grain District. Sox says the opportunity is now, as rents haven’t yet caught up to construction costs. A tax break requiring residential development to have a certain degree of attainable, aff ordable housing is fi rmly in place. “We are cognizant of the G-word — gentrifi cation,” he says. At the same time, on the industrial side, there is an unprecedented amount of industrial space under construction that has been estimated at anywhere between million and million sq. ft. During a walking tour guided by Sox, a major stage was being erected for a concert by the country group Diamond Rio, part of the week’s festivities surrounding the BMW Charity Pro-Am, a Korn Ferry Tour golf tournament. Nearby is a pandemic- inspired pedestrian zone that has now become permanent. “A Frenchman told me ‘Americans don’t do this.’ But we did,” says Sox of the outdoor tables at restaurant after restaurant. Soon we were sitting at one on a nearby street at Lemongrass Kitchen and being waited on by its straightforward proprietor Brian Nguyen, who relocated from San Diego to be part of this emerging scene. “Something about this place feels really real,” Sox says. “ ere is opportunity and grit here. Not OneSpartanburg’s Kyle Sox says places like his community are appealing because they feel “really real.” Photo courtesy of OneSpartanburg86 JULY 2023 SITE SELECTION everything is polished and new.” You can walk into an old downtown tavern like e Nu-Way Lounge & Restaurant and order a Trailer Park burger or drop into Venus Pie New York-style pizzeria. You can just as easily walk past the corporate HQ of Denny’s and enter one of fi ve Spartanburg Community College campuses, located on the former site of Spartanburg High School a few blocks away. Other Upstate towns not named Spartanburg or Greenville are attracting interest from companies and citizens alike. Sox calls Woodruff on the southern end of the region a “diamond in the rough. He describes Greer, familiar to industry as home to an inland port, as “super walkable” with its own food hall. Laurens has its own downtown scene, as do Anderson, Clemson (the town) and other Main Street places like Mauldin, Fountain Inn, Seneca, Greenwood and Simpsonville. “Laurens, with a % industrial workforce, gets a lot of looks from industry,” Sox says, but nowadays, “we take prospects there as a place to live. Travelers Rest used to be a store and a gas station. Now it’s a cultural community. It’s a destination.” Startup Energy in All Directions Cecilia Zapata-Harms is COO of VYRTY/Sync. MD. She found her company’s destination two years ago at the Anderson County Incubator at , a landing pad and incubator located in downtown Anderson. Sync.MD specializes in the secure mobile data storage of health and medical records. “Sync. MD landing in the Upstate represents areas where the Upstate is poised for growth — life sciences, technology and market entry into a landing pad space,” said Upstate SC Alliance President and CEO John Lummus when the company arrived in June . “We look forward to seeing this innovative digital health solutions provider grow in our region.” Zapata-Harms says the company has grown from full-time employees in the area to today, plus seven software developers located in various spots on the globe. She says the relocation search for the company started in - as fi nding talent and even investors was becoming increasingly diffi cult in what she calls the “noisy and crowded” tech space of Greater Seattle, competing not only with other entrepreneurial fi rms but with the likes of big employers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook. As the search began, the company’s CEO struck up a close relationship with Congressman Jeff Duncan, a Clemson graduate representing South Carolina’s ird District. “He said, ‘South Carolina is expanding its technology hub. Why don’t you come visit our state?’ So we did,” Zapata-Harms says. After a week of friendly meetings with everyone from the state’s commerce department to military veterans (a population well suited for Sync.MD’s technology), she and the CEO looked at each other at the airport and said, “ is is it.” at was in February . Once board approval was secured, staff were informed and by spring seven employees and their families were “packing up, moving and closing the door in Redmond,” she says. All the infrastructure and hospitality was fi ne. Even fi ner was the Series B fi nancing round the company had just opened that within three months TIME Bicycles and BOYD Cycling both are investing and creating jobs in the Upstate. Photo courtesy of TIME Bicycles SITE SELECTION JULY 2023 87 of relocation had closed — with all South Carolina– based investors. “I think the planets were aligned,” Zapata-Harms says. “The South Carolina business community really support each other. They want all businesses to succeed and will do anything they can do to introduce, make connections and build that relationship.” She’s found great support and value from the Upstate SC Alliance and groups such as NEXT, the Greenville-based hub supporting high-impact startups and entrepreneurs with programming, venture monitoring, founder workshops and flexible workspace, among other services. The area talent pool could stand to be improved in IT and software engineering, she says, and groups like NEXT (as well as area universities and colleges) are responsive and proactive. They also help spark new connections and ideas. A company founder may not feel the time or energy is available to think about new things. “But somewhere in there when you’re involved with groups like NEXT, you meet all these people and innovation comes,” she says. “There are a lot of opportunities in those groups.” It’s a familiar sensation across the Upstate. Opportunities arise. Connections are forged. Destinations are everywhere you look. And the journeys to them are worth taking. Baxley says when she graduated in 1998 and worked for Milliken she never would have considered moving to Travelers Rest. “If I were graduating today, I would be living in Travelers Rest and loving the interconnection of the live-work-play,” she says. In the site selection arena today, she says, “having these interconnected communities is a real draw for that workforce.” Why? It’s simple. When you live in a place with that kind of balance, says Baxley, “You want to be where you are.” LIVE, WORK & PLAY Jackie Baxley, HRP Associates88 JULY 2023 SITE SELECTION Rural Upstate Home to SOPHISTICATED TECHNICAL WORKFORCE I n the Oconee County town of Seneca, South Carolina, not far from Lake Keowee, the BASF North American Apprenticeship Development Program launched in 2021 in partnership with Tri-County Technical College (TCTC), Apprenticeship Carolina and readySC is getting ready to welcome its fourth cohort. Participants earn $22.50 per hour and are full-time employees while attending class one day a week at TCTC’s Oconee Campus in Westminster as part of the company’s registered apprenticeship program in process technology. “Our company wants to grow in diversity and inclusion at this site and globally,” said Elba Lizardi, BASF Seneca site director, at the program’s launch two years ago. The company’s goal is 30% female/ under-represented minority leadership by 2030. In June I met up with Lizardi and BASF Continuous Improvement Engineer and Apprenticeship Coordinator Gene Durrance at the gleaming TCTC campus, complete with a technical lab sponsored by Duke Energy and all the classroom and conferencing amenities one would expect from a cutting-edge technical college. “Right now we’re in a growth phase, which is why we’re looking for new ways to attract people,” says Lizardi. BASF has created more than 50 jobs at the site in the past two years and now has invested slightly over $70 million in the facility, “and we need the additional workforce to support that.” The BASF plant is a specialty chemical catalysts manufacturing and precious metal refining facility that has over 500 employees and contractors on site — a number that’s rising. The operation deals with hazardous and valuable materials such as platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium and gold. That means molten metal and heat, which means a premium on safety, which means a super-premium on technical training. That and the competitive industrial employment landscape explain the high starting hourly pay for the apprentices— the highest-paid apprenticeship in the state by 36 cents. “We in Seneca are the one refining solution for BASF,” Lizardi says of her site. “We are gathering materials in Europe and in North America and mostly funneling them to Seneca. We run a 24/7 operation and we don’t shut down.” The highest-value precious metals become part of BASF’s business. So do the highest-value, precious workers. Family Dynamic Lizardi’s team worked with TCTC to build the program based on a program deployed by BASF at its large sites in Texas, bringing Durrance in with the second cohort. “Each year we’ve made changes to curriculum, hiring and targeting,” she says, so each successive group is better prepared. Participants range from 19-year-olds with no experience to ex- military to a stay-at-home mother re-entering the workforce after 15 years. Along the way, the cohorts build their own cohesive family, says Lizardi, noting one apprentice who suffered multiple personal calamities. She found immediate support from her UPSTATE SC INTELLIGENCE REPORT: WORKFORCE BASF’s growing site in Seneca, South Carolina, now has more than 500 employees and contractors on site. Photo courtesy of BASF SITE SELECTION JULY 2023 89 peers: “They engulfed her,” she says. As did BASF plant floor and corporate staff. “It’s a big company with a big heart,” Lizardi says, noting the efforts BASF has made to extract and support staff from Ukraine, for example. The hearts beat plenty strong in Oconee County too. Of the apprentice group dynamic, she says, “It’s cool to watch. They create their own community. They know each other’s families.” The classroom is led by instructor Bill Edge, a retired Duke Energy engineer. Topics range from nitty-gritty tool operation and maintenance to how pumps and valves work to safety case studies, OSHA 10 certification, continuous improvement, Lean Six Sigma and leadership. “You see them growing on the floor and in the classroom,” Durrance says, noting how the stay-at-home mom has gone from reticent to outspoken and assertive with a little coaching. “I say, ‘Pretend you’re a parent,’ ” Durrance says with a laugh. “It shows you can grow at any age. That’s what I love about this program. “The high schools are also really getting on board with this,” he says. When he visits schools and tells students they can be making over $50,000 a year plus benefits right out of high school with a bit more education, he finds some teachers inquiring about the program too, even as the graduates continue to sign up. “We interviewed three yesterday,” he says. “They are getting the message. Teachers are telling students. It’s a pool we can draw from.” The program has now graduated 19 apprentices in all and is aiming for a class of 10-15 in that fourth cohort. The prospect is as exciting for management as it is for the apprentices. “I can’t wait for the next,” says Durrance. “You absolutely see the transformation,” Lizardi say. “You give them confidence in a new space. We have a lot of women because of that. They’re surviving and seeing manufacturing is not this big black hole with only men. We have mothers rooms, so if you have a family you can still come back to work. We have paternity leave too. I would say we’re very active in all levels of diversity: we raised the pride month flag June 1 as we did at all BASF sites around the world. We have an employee transitioning who shared his story and wanted us to publish it that day. We have a very active military veterans group. “Manufacturing,” she says, “can be for anyone.” SITE SELECTION JULY 2023 91 H ow important is sustainability, really, to today’s global manufacturers? I put the question to Scott Gatzemeier, the corporate vice president of front end US expansion at Micron who’s leading the construction of new semiconductor manufacturing projects in New York and Idaho worth tens of billions of dollars. “Sustainability is paramount to a future that enriches life for all,” he says. “If you look at our selection of New York for the future home of our planned megafab, there is availability and access to clean, reliable power and water to achieve our long-term environmental goals. We aim to use green infrastructure and sustainable building attributes for the construction of the new fab to attain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold status. And we aim to achieve % water reuse, recycling and restoration as well as use % renewable electricity at the new fab.” As it happens, New York is No. in this year’s Site Selection Sustainability Ranking, based on criteria that include several of the factors Gatzemeier mentions (see charts). North Carolina — which happens to be home since to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Effi ciency (DSIRE) located at the NC Clean Energy Technology Center at North Carolina State University — is No. , followed by Colorado and Virginia. Among U.S. metro areas, metro Austin, Texas, claims the top spot, followed by the greater metro areas of Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Charlotte, North Carolina; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Columbus, Ohio. Among nations, Sweden takes the No. spot, followed by the United States, Canada, the UK and Ireland. “A greener, more secure and freer Europe is the foundation of our priorities,” said Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in December as the country assumed a six-month presidency of the Council of the EU. by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com Image: Getty Images THE GREENEST LOCATIONS IN THE WORLDMore and more companies share Micron’s perspective. JLL’s Responsible Real Estate study found that corporate occupiers are looking to prioritize carbon-centered language in their next lease. “Clauses around EVs, embodied carbon, electrifi cation and overall emissions showed the greatest increase in prioritization among these corporate leaders,” JLL said of a survey of more than corporate decision-makers. “Corporate occupiers increasingly view electric vehicle (EV) charging stations as a top priority. In fact, more than % of companies in the Americas and EMEA are looking to include EV charging stations in future leases.” JLL Research also found that cities with greater saturation of green offi ce spaces have lower premiums. “For example, green buildings in Denver represent % of Class A offi ce stock and achieve a green premium of %. In contrast, green buildings represent only % of offi ce stock but achieve % premiums in Austin,” JLL said. Unique Data Index, Valuable Partner Perspectives First conceived in , Site Selection’s Sustainability Rankings reveal the countries, U.S. states and U.S. metros cultivating the most fertile environment for a sustainable economy. Derived from a unique index incorporating everything from green building square footage per capita to manufacturing of renewable energy products and degree of corporate social responsibility among area employers, the rankings off er a metric for assessing which locations are pointed toward a green and balanced future. Unlike many green yardsticks, our index incorporates the “dirty” side of green industry too: We don’t just track where solar and wind energy are being produced, for example, but also where the solar panels and modules, wind turbines and nacelles are being fabricated, assembled and shipped out. is year, in addition to data from our project partners at CSRHub, the rankings welcome back into the index the global building data insights of Measurabl, the San Diego–based ESG platform for commercial real estate that recently raised $ million in its Series D funding round and whose global portfolio of customers is growing by leaps and bounds: e company now employs more than people and tracks building-level ESG data on more than billion sq. ft. of real estate across more than countries. We also welcome into the index for the fi rst time the global data and analysis of the Center for Active Design, which oversees the Fitwel healthy building certifi cation standard that to date has . billion sq. ft. registered on the platform, impacting more than . million people. “Our data, and the subsequent Site Selection global ratings, align snugly with conventional rankings of the most sustainable and ‘green’ countries,” says Chad Boyle, analytics engineer at Measurabl. “While the United States places uncharacteristically high in your rankings, possibly due to a preponderance of quality data from climate-minded customers, it is unsurprising (and validating) to see top placements scooped up by places like Sweden, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, and others who are often regarded as leading the charge in sustainable real estate.” Sweden and Europe are facing the historic task of breaking their dependence on fossil fuels. At the same time, competitiveness must be enhanced to contribute to increased growth.” — Ebba Busch , Sweden’s Minister for Energy, Business and Industry o found that cities with greater Sweden and Europe are facing the historic task of breaking their arch also found that cities with greater The campus of UNC Charlotte — home to the Battery Complexity, Autonomous Vehicle and Electrifi cation Research Center (BATT CAVE) and to ample LEED- or Green Globes–certifi ed square footage — off ers evidence of North Carolina’s green credentials in both practice and study. Photo courtesy of UNC Charlotte 92 JULY 2023 SITE SELECTION Image: Getty ImagesNext >