< Previous56 SEPTEMBER 2024 S I T E S EL E C T I O N the U.S. every year. We will continue to invest in our manufacturing operations as we expand our space, but we also plan to expand in Europe and Asia.” A Sign of the Changing Times At $800 million, the Kikkoman expansion in Wisconsin ranks as one of the five largest capital investment deals in food manufacturing in America over the past five years, per the Conway Projects Database, a corporate facility tracking tool of Site Selection and its parent Conway Data Inc. in Atlanta. The Kikkoman project is also one of 20 corporate facility deals announced by Japanese companies in the Upper Midwest region of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa since 2019. Quentin Messer, the president, CEO and chair of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. (MEDC), says it is no secreat why Japanese CEOs love the Upper Midwest. “Toyota has been here for 50-plus years. They want to be in a place where culturally they are comfortable,” he says. “We have a vibrant Japanese community in Novi. They know that when they come to Michigan, we are focused on building a relationship with them. It is not just transactional. We make it easy to say yes.” Case in point is FANUC America, a Japanese-owned company that on July 10 officially opened its new $110 million West Campus facility in Auburn Hills, Michigan. The 650,000-sq.-ft. complex will be used for robotics manufacturing. “This major expansion represents our growth strategy in the U.S. and our steadfast commitment to the future of the automation and robotics industry,” said Mike Cicco, president and CEO of FANUC America. According to MEDC, more than 5,300 jobs and $1.8 billion in private investment have come to Michigan from Japanese companies in the last 10 years. There are currently 456 Japanese facilities in Michigan supporting nearly 40,000 jobs statewide, per the Japanese Consulate in Detroit. Messer says corporate facility investments like this happen because state leaders prioritize high-value deals from other parts of the globe. “We opened a trade office in Taiwan. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan,” he says. “This effort to attract FDI comes from the highest office in our state. About a year ago, the governor and MEDC announced a new economic development strategy called ‘Make It in Michigan.’ At some point, you have to go out and compete. “We aim to compete for the newest technology and make sure those industries see the value in locating in Michigan,” he says. “This is a great time to be in the Midwest.” “We are fortunate to have incentives from the state and local communities, but they were not the deciding factors. Logistics is the most important factor.” —Osamu Mogi, Senior Executive Corporate Officer, International Operations Division, Kikkoman Corp.Next-Gen Industries Invest in Next-Gen Facilities Back in the day, there was a great future in plastics, as Mr. McGuire (Walter Brooke) told Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoff man) in “ e Graduate.” Today, that line would likely substitute plastics with advanced materials. Composites, engineered polymers, hybrid materials and nanomaterials were unheard of in when the movie was released. Today, they’re at the center of product innovation in virtually every manufacturing sector, from aerospace to electric vehicles to renewable energy to medical devices. by MARK AREND mark.arend@siteselection.com AD V ANCED MA TERIALS 58 SEPTEMBER 2024 S I T E S EL E C T I O N Firefl y Aerospace is deploying this new Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) machine at a newly expanded site in Briggs, Texas. Photo courtesy of Firefl y Aerospace S I T E S E L E C T I O N SEPTEMBER 2024 59 For the aerospace industry, advanced materials such as titanium alloys and carbon-fiber composites provide lighter- weight, more durable materials for use in engine components, wings, fuselages and other aircraft parts. They’ve been in use in aircraft and space-vehicle manufacturing for years. Automotive manufacturers used advanced materials to make vehicles lighter and more fuel efficient. As applied to the electric vehicle sector, they’re particularly critical to helping manufacturers achieve energy and sustainability goals. Where Facilities Are Being Located Where is capital being invested today in advanced materials facilities for aerospace, EV production, semiconductors and other end users? In July, Massachusetts-based EFC Gases & Advanced Materials announced plans for a new facility in McGregor, Texas, near Waco, that will be a supplier to the semiconductor industry in central Texas. “The new facility will play a crucial role in onshoring essential materials for semiconductor fabs, aligning seamlessly with Texas’ thriving semiconductor industry,” said Pavel A. Perlov, president and CEO of EFC, announcing the $210 million, 120-job project. The McGregor Industrial Park, where EFC Gases & Advanced Materials will build its facility, is midway between the Dallas- Fort Worth and Austin metros, in the heart of Texas’ semiconductor industry. Epsilon Advanced Materials (EAM), an Indian maker of battery materials, is building a $650 million graphite anode manufacturing facility in Brunswick County, North Carolina. The 1.5-million-sq.-ft. facility will create about 500 jobs. It’s set to begin operations in 2026 and be at full capacity by 2031, at which time it will 60 SEPTEMBER 2024 S I T E S EL E C T I O N be producing 50,000 tons of graphite anode annually. The Brunswick County location puts EAM in close proximity to the Port of Wilmington, vehicle manufacturing facilities in the Southeast and numerous automotive suppliers. “Having an environmentally friendly world-class facility in North Carolina resolves supply chain concerns that the automotive industry has experienced in recent years,” said EAM CEO Sunit Kapur in a statement. “We are proud that with our tech capability to manufacture both natural and synthetic graphite, we will be able to provide graphite anodes to the growing EV battery industry faster, more reliably and at a competitive cost without import challenges.” Carbon Fiber Innovations A recent aerospace industry advanced materials project has come from space transportation company Firefly Aerospace, which is doubling its manufacturing space in Briggs, Texas, north of Austin, to 207,000 sq. ft. The company works with Northrop Grumman on production of the Antares 330 and the Medium Launch Vehicle (MLV). The new space will accommodate two rocket production and assembly buildings, two new test stands and equipment for advanced materials. The company also has expanded its headquarters and operations centers in Cedar Park, Texas, located closer to Austin next to Round Rock. “Firefly’s new automated fiber placement machinery, which is already widely used and proven in the aircraft industry, is a significantly more efficient and cost-effective approach to rocket production and can be utilized for composite parts across our vehicle lines,” said Dan Fermon, COO of Firefly Aerospace, in a company release. “These high-speed robotic machines can lay up more than 200 pounds of carbon fiber per hour, allowing us to produce all the large carbon composite structures for Alpha in just seven days and MLV in just 30 days. This is about nine times faster and seven times cheaper than our former process using high-touch laser placement systems.” Speaking of carbon fiber, in January, Toray Composite Materials America, Inc., commissioned an upgraded carbon fiber production line in its Decatur, Alabama, facility. The company says the $15 million upgrade “doubles the production capacity of the TORAYCA™ T1100 carbon fiber and adds critical redundancy to support the rising demand for defense applications.” Toray is a supplier to several United States Department of Defense (DoD) weapons systems and the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. It has additional facilities in Tacoma, Washington, and Spartanburg, South Carolina. A rendering of the $650 million graphite anode manufacturing facility Epsilon Advanced Materials is building in Brunswick County, North Carolina. Image courtesy of Epsilon Advanced Materials S I T E S E L E C T I O N SEPTEMBER 2024 61 Built incrementally at a current cost of $250 million and considered the model of “second generation” urban rail projects, the Portland Streetcar began producing dividends even before it entered service in 2001. A 2016 study by the Federal Transit Administration found that as of the 1997 decision to go forward with the project, $4.5 billion of market value had been developed along the Streetcar’s path, including 7.7 million sq. ft. of commercial space and 18,000 residential units. According to Dan Bower, executive director of Portland Streetcar, Inc., added market value within the Streetcar’s target area has since surged to $13.3 billion. The Streetcar initially covered about seven miles. Since extended to 16 miles along parallel loops and dotted by 70 stations, it stitches together a series of downtown neighborhoods, several of which it is widely credited with helping to revitalize and re-imagine. Property owners along the path were incentivized to invest in the public-private project, says Bower, by the rezoning of target areas from industrial to mixed use, which boosted property values and set the stage for the development that has followed. “The people who paid for the Streetcar,” Bower tells Site Selection, “are largely the property owners along it who formed a local improvement district. Everybody within four blocks of the Streetcar essentially voted to tax themselves to build it.” Portland’s bustling Pearl District is the most visible manifestation of the economic vibrancy the Streetcar has helped to catalyze. Once little more than a railroad yard, it’s now a bustling neighborhood of office and residential space, bars, restaurants and pedestrian life. “It was really like a completely new neighborhood that we shaped around the Streetcar line,” says Bower. “The growth trajectory of the Pearl District,” agrees Lisa Abuaf, director of development and investment for Prosper Portland, the city’s economic and urban development agency, “has really chased alignment with the Streetcar. It has literally changed our skyline. It started with five- and seven-story buildings and now you’re talking about 20-plus stories.” With a proven record of promoting growth, Portland’s neighborhood rail is set to expand. by GARY DAUGHTERS gary.daughters@siteselection.com TRANSIT -ORIENTED DEVEL OPMENT Spreading th e Streetcar Love The Portland Streetcar Photo courtesy of the Portland Streetcar, Inc.62 SEPTEMBER 2024 S I T E S EL E C T I O N ‘Radical’ Mixed Use A team of dreamers is out to reinvent struggling Old Town, located near the Pearl Distinct and served by Portland’s MAX Light Rail Service. “Made in Old Town” is the brainchild of Elias Stahl, founder and CEO of Portland-based Hilos, whose production platform blends 3D printing with traditional footwear craft. With public backing, Made in Old Town looks to purchase and renovate about a dozen aging but elegant buildings for green manufacturing with a focus on athletic shoes and apparel, Portland’s calling cards. “There’s an opportunity here where we can work with the community, work with our neighbors, and bring manufacturers back to these old buildings and do it all around outdoor and apparel,” Stahl tells Site Selection. “Really build the cluster around this incredible center of gravity that Portland already has and do it around manufacturing innovation.” As Stahl’s chief partner in Made in Old Town, architect and urban planner Matthew Claudel says “transit in all its forms is hugely important to what we hope to accomplish.” Claudel, founder of the design and strategy firm Field States, says Old Town’s existing layout offers multiple transit-related opportunities. “You can’t talk about manufacturing without having a way to move things in and out. The streets,” he says, “are wide and they’re built for multimodal uses. Our future is to have automated electric lorries that are moving goods throughout the district.” Pedestrian traffic, encouraged by Old Town’s wide, tree-lined sidewalks, is equally crucial to the project’s promised campus feel. Both Stahl and Claudel see Made in Old Town as a model for urban office markets “in every city in the United States,” Claudel says, upended by COVID-19 and still adapting to remote and hybrid work. “It’s about telling a story of place that’s grounded in our past but also a roadmap for our future,” Claudel says. “We believe that the new approach to a vibrant neighborhood has to be radically mixed use and that it needs an anchor in something like manufacturing — in our case apparel manufacturing — which is the solid economic base on which you can build a well-balanced, vibrant neighborhood.” “There’s a need,” Stahl says, “for states and cities to re-envision the uses of neighborhoods and to be multi-use and multi-purpose and, at the same time, to allow an industry that’s mostly gone overseas to think about manufacturing and innovation in their own backyard.” The Streetcar’s New Horizon With the example of the Pearl District in mind, Portland recently committed to a $120 million, 1.3-mile Streetcar extension into the Northwest region known as Montgomery Park, named for the hulking former Montgomery Ward warehouse that is the defining landmark of an area that’s otherwise mostly vacant. The Montgomery Park Area Plan devised by the Portland Bureau of Transportation and the city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability envisions business development that will create some 3,000 new jobs amid abundant affordable housing. The Streetcar’s Bower says the project’s financing and development strategies align with how Portland has done it before, beginning with leading property owners. “They’re going to be contributing toward the funding for the Streetcar. In exchange, their land is being rezoned from industrial to mixed use. What that does is create value for them, so all of a sudden their land is worth more money. In exchange, they help build the roads, build affordable housing and meet certain targets for jobs.” What Portland is looking at, Bower says, “is like what we see in the Pearl District, where you have a lot of middle- wage jobs and a lot of housing and access to the largest urban park in North America [Forest Park]. And it’s all going to be served by the Streetcar system. It’s an area,” he says, “that’s going to offer a lot of opportunity for the people who choose to work and live there.” CITY WITHIN A In a world overfl owing with fake downtowns, the real thing can be refreshing. Unless, of course, it’s got a big hole in its heart. at’s how former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young once described the area known as the Gulch, an underdeveloped patch of tangled infrastructure surrounded by parking, overpasses and attractions such as State Farm Arena (where the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks play), Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the massive Georgia World Congress Center and, just a few steps away, Atlanta University Center, home to HBCU institutions Morehouse College and the Morehouse School of Medicine, Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College. Various schemes to redevelop the area always ran into roadblocks, until Tony Ressler came to town. In , a group led by Ressler purchased the Atlanta Hawks. When he saw the Gulch up close, he immediately placed a call to his brother Richard, one of the founders of Los Angeles–based developer CIM Group, asking him to check it out. e seed was planted, then cultivated in when the Georgia Legislature passed HB, which provides for enterprise zone fees to be charged in lieu of sales tax. An entity called Centennial Yards Company was created. It acquired buildings in a roughly -acre footprint and by had commenced redevelopment of the area into a mixed- use district. A few years on, serial entrepreneur and Georgia Tech graduate KP Reddy, founder and CEO of seed-stage tech investment fi rm Shadow Ventures, was in a meeting with CIM Group leaders and heard questions only an economic developer could answer. Asked who he might recommend, he referred them to Brian McGowan, who had left a post as president and CEO of Atlanta Beltline by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com DO WNT O WN A TLANT A, GEORGIA S I T E S E L E C T I O N SEPTEMBER 2024 63 INVES TMENT REPOR T Centennial Yards sets the tone for Atlanta’s future. CITY The latest element to join in on the $5 billion Centennial Yards mixed-use redevelopment in downtown Atlanta is Cosm, a three-level immersive entertainment venue announced in July. Rendering courtesy of Gensler, Cosm and Centennial Yards64 SEPTEMBER 2024 S I T E S EL E C T I O N to become CEO of Greater Seattle Partners three years earlier. His resume also includes positions as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Deputy Secretary of Commerce for the State of California, CEO of Invest Atlanta and Executive Vice President/ COO of the Metro Atlanta Chamber. In a conversation between visits from various delegations in Centennial Yards Company’s offices overlooking the $5 billion redevelopment, McGowan says after lengthy phone calls and meetings with CIM Group executives about filling that “hole in the heart of a major American city,” he was told they were looking for a president to lead the effort. “I hesitated,” he says, “before saying, ‘I can probably find someone to help you do that.’ Then they said, ‘Would you be interested?’ And I said, ‘Oh, hell yes.” He says the position “felt like I could apply all the skills, knowledge and things I’ve ever done as an economic developer as a capstone in my life. It’s business attraction, it’s incentives, it’s government relations, workforce development, affordable housing.” After a decision to self-perform instead of hiring a general contractor, he says, it’s also construction. And there’s a big deadline: The 2026 World Cup in the United States. As reported online by Site Selection intern David Owens earlier this summer, soccer in metro Atlanta is taking off, with the recent location of U.S. Soccer Federation’s HQ and national training center south of the city in Fayette County and the scheduled playing of no fewer than eight matches (including a semifinal) during the World Cup. “We are full steam ahead, looking at that World Cup deadline as a really important marker,” McGowan says, when the project will be advanced enough to host large gatherings of fans to watch match broadcasts. Meanwhile, like the historic railyard nexus it occupies, Centennial Yards is catalyzing other real estate development activity spinning off its axis. The owner of Atlanta Tech Village, David Cummings, has just purchased a portfolio of 50 historic buildings in south downtown. CNN Center has come under new ownership. “I think all of this was inspired by CIM making such a huge commitment,” McGowan says. “This is having that ripple effect, causing other investors to see the potential of downtown Atlanta.” How It Got Rolling Though the entire site is designated as a brownfield, McGowan says the project has been surprisingly free of issues thus far and Norfolk Southern, which owned part of the property, has been easy to work with — perhaps in part because the project’s purchase of the railroad’s original HQ and property helped them make the decision fiscally to build their new HQ in Atlanta, McGowan suggests. “You would think a former railyard would have lots of contamination issues, but we haven’t found any show- stoppers,” he says. Asked what’s allowed the project to avoid a financial roadblock, he harkens back to his experience in California when redevelopment agencies were eliminated because affluent places like Indian Wells were allowed to claim the desert as blight and give their 20% set-asides for affordable housing to another city 20 miles away. “That caused legislators to eliminate it,” he says. In Atlanta, there was a clear and bipartisan recognition that a 50-acre hole in the signature city of a region of 6 million people wasn’t good for anybody. “It disconnects downtown, Construction is full steam ahead as Centennial Yards aims to welcome soccer fans during the 2026 World Cup, which will feature eight matches in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Rendering and photo courtesy of Gensler, Cosm and Centennial YardsNext >