< PreviousGregg Wassmansdorf: Depending on where you look around the country, depending on the sourcing strategy of the fab and their localization strategy, you can see in places around the country where there might be only 10 or 15 or 20 suppliers located near the fab and in other areas there are 75 or 90 or 100 companies that are all oriented toward the fab. That large clustering effect tends to be more common. That raises the question for a lot of communities, ‘If I’m on the west side of town and the fab landed on the east side of town actually in a different city within our metro area, how do we get some of the action?’ We know the fab has landed but we don’t know who the suppliers are or where they will locate. Part of that education process is helping communities understand that after the fab you still have requirements for heavy, medium and light industrial lab facilities, light industrial and office throughout the entire value chain. There are opportunities for communities within a metro to potentially get a piece of the action whether that’s small, medium or large, with different asset types and different workforce requirements. What’s your take on the current supply of megasites necessary for fab projects? Robert Hess: We want more sites, and we want more ready sites, more qualified sites. That’s our mantra. But I’m wondering if there isn’t some decent product out there that just needs to be reimagined, repositioned and repurposed. As site selectors ourselves, sometimes we find diamonds in the rough like a brownfield site that is SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 89 almost clean. Can we accelerate this and repurpose it? We have clients that want us to look at greenfield and brownfield sites and potentially even urban versus just finding sites on the edge of the city. They want to know if we looked at everything. Gregg Wassmansdorf: There are very few sites out there that are large — 500 acres or more — that you could call ready. Of the 2,000 or so sites that Newmark has looked at in the last five years or so in our project work, about 8% are 1,000 acres or more at various stages of readiness. It does take some imagination sometimes to perceive what is it now and, on the timeline of getting all the infrastructure and the site ready, whether this site in the future has the capability and capacity to support what we’re doing. Places like Clay, New York, that won the Micron project — that’s another site that we identified and vetted and then put forward and supported the state of New York with. They had to first lose TSMC to Arizona and then lose Intel to Ohio. They had spent so much time and effort getting ready and making investments that when Micron came along and asked them all their tough questions their answer to almost every question was, ‘Next slide. We have the answer for you. We’ll show you the plan. We’ve done our homework, and we know what it takes.’ But that’s years of effort, years of getting to a position of readiness. It doesn’t mean the pipes are in the ground, but it means that conceptualization and design engineering work has been done so they can say with confidence they can actually deliver what they say they can deliver. INVESTMENT PROFILE: OHIO How Smaller Communities Foster Statewide Prosperity W hen a state is recognized for economic development success, as is the case with Site Selection’s annual Governors’ Cups (one for total capital investment projects the previous year and one for total projects per capita), the big projects that create thousands of new jobs near major metros naturally come to mind. In Ohio, think Intel’s announcement that it will invest more than $ billion in two chip factories near Columbus for production of advanced semiconductors. e campus will employ ,000 Intel staff plus an additional 10,000 support workers. But the Governors’ Cups recognize total projects, not just the large projects in the states’ metro areas. In , of Ohio’s qualifying projects, or %, were claimed by micropolitans — communities with populations between , and , typically not associated with a larger metro. In fact, Ohio routinely is the state with the most micropolitans nationally winning capital investment projects. Findlay has been the most successful micropolitan nationally for consecutive years; it won projects in . What makes Ohio’s communities — large and small — so consistently successful? On one level, it’s the state’s Midwest location, workforce supply and productivity, and a business climate that includes no corporate income tax. On another, it’s the breadth of resources Ohio and JobsOhio, the state’s private 90 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION by MARK AREND mark.arend@siteselection.com Youngstown, Ohio Photo: Getty ImagesThis Investment Profile was prepared under the auspices of JobsOhio. For more information, visit www.jobsohio.com. SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 91 economic development corporation, in particular, make available to companies and communities. How Small Businesses Ramp Up The JobsOhio Small Business Grant, for example, provides up to $50,000 to qualifying companies to support business expansion activities. Recipients must be businesses that are mainly minority-, woman- or veteran-owned or run by a owner with a disability. They also must operate in a designated target industry. Athens County-based Milo’s Whole World Gourmet, in rural southeastern Ohio, was awarded a JobsOhio Small Business Grant so it could add machinery and equipment at its 2,100-sq.-ft. production facility to keep up with growing demand for its specialty foods. The Small Business Grant also helped support the opening in 2023 of Adelphi Bank in Columbus, the only Minority- Owned Depository in Ohio, and the first to open in the U.S. since 2000. “Starting a new community bank relies on the investment of local businesses, civic organizations, and other community members — investors who have knowledge of and relationships in the areas they’re investing,” said Kevin L. Boyce, founder, in an August 2024 JobsOhio blog. “With the assistance of organizations like JobsOhio, Adelphi Bank is possible. We’re grateful to have been received by the state in such a strong way and for the opportunity to uplift our Central Ohio community.” In June, the JobsOhio Small Business Academy was created to assist growing B2B companies in growing their businesses. Aileron, a nonprofit providing leadership training for growing small businesses, will administer the Academy. “Aileron was founded on the belief that small businesses improve lives and raise the quality of life,” said Aileron Board of Trustees Chairman Mike Mathile at the Academy launch. “This partnership is empowering that meaningful work right here in Ohio as JobsOhio and Aileron uplift leaders, organizations and communities across the state.” How Small Communities Are Competing Ohio’s Vibrant Communities Program supports projects in small- and mid-sized cities deemed distressed to improve quality of place, increase real estate inventory and encourage capital investment. One of the first projects to benefit from the grant program is the Lee and Rosemary Fisher Innovation College@Elm, at Miami University in Oxford. JobsOhio describes it as “a facility for incubating and accelerating entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses that offers the training and workforce education necessary to produce Ohio’s future manufacturing and high-tech workforce.” Governor Mike DeWine on the incubator launch: “Our smaller and mid-sized cities, like Oxford, are a rich part of the social fabric of this state, and with the expansion of the Vibrant Communities Grant Program, even the smallest villages in Ohio can better develop their communities to build a stronger economic future.” In September 2022, a $475,000 Vibrant Communities Program grant was awarded to the Youngstown Business Incubator to spur economic development in that northeast Ohio city. A $1.9 million U.S. EDA Public Works grant also was earmarked for the project, enabling new office, research and manufacturing space in the 65,000-sq.-ft. facility. One tenant occupying space in the incubator is JuggerBot 3D, a growing manufacturer of large-format 3D printers. A JobsOhio Small Business Grant also helped the company accelerate. “We help companies avoid game- changing surprises with a proven process that protects their confidential information,” noted J.P. Nauseef, president and CEO of JobsOhio, in an interview that appears in the 2024 Ohio Business Growth Guide. “We don’t just see company growth as a metric — we want Ohio to be their competitive advantage. And we’re willing to work as hard as it takes to make it happen. “These smaller towns support small and large businesses alike,” he added, “due to focused investment in infrastructure and rehabilitation of buildings through programs like the Ohio Historic Preservation Tax Credit and the JobsOhio Vibrant Communities Grant that attracts $7 of private investment to rebuild downtowns for every $1 of JobsOhio funding.” I f there is one person that can unite the world, it just might be Taylor Swift herself. In December 2024, Swift wrapped the 149-show Eras Tour, which took place across 51 cities in 21 countries. As reported by The New York Times, more than 10.1 million Swifties shelled out over $2 billion on tickets to attend the nearly four hour long concerts. The worldwide economic impact — the “Swiftonomics” — resulting from the 14-time Grammy winner’s tour left the cities she graced with much more than a catchy tune to remember her “All Too Well” by. American ticket exchange and resale company StubHub’s annual Year in Live Experiences report revealed Swift’s tour was a top seller for the second year in a row globally. Aside from the draw to just see Swift, U.S. ticket buyers traveled to international events twice as much as they did in 2023, according to the report. The top five international cities that drew in the most U.S. visitors were Toronto, Madrid, Vancouver, London and Paris. Following one of Swift’s shows that took place in Atlanta in April 2023, Nani Martin, 27, wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye to the Eras Tour. A year later, the Georgia native, who grew up on Swift’s music, decided to book a flight to Paris, France, in May 2024 to experience the European leg of the tour, only this time with $300 pre-sale VIP floor tickets. “We were so close, so did not want to leave our seats,” says Martin. “It was so intimate because it was a way smaller venue than Atlanta. The show also included ‘The Tortured Poet’s Department’ album, so it was nice to have a different element to the show than the Atlanta concert.” Martin says Swift’s four-night stop in the city led to a Swiftie takeover in Paris, from bonding with new people from around the world to breaking out in song on the city’s metro train. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I got twice, and I can’t wait to tell my kids one day that I was a part of it,” she says. “We spent a pretty penny the rest of the trip as we made it into a whole experience, traveling to many other countries and eating our way through Europe.” New Orleans The Eras Tour landed in New Orleans, Louisiana, for three days at the Caesars Superdome on the final weekend of October 2024. Nearly 200,000 tickets were purchased across all three shows. Hotel occupancy in the city was recorded at 100% on both Friday and Saturday, with just over 80% on Sunday. Over five days, an estimated $1,200 to $1,500 was spent per attendee on merch sales. “Those numbers do not reflect short- term rentals” nor Swiftie family and friends staying with residents, says New by ALEXIS ELMORE alexis.elmore@siteselection.com FILM & ENTERTAINMENT 92 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION Era -placeable The Impact of Taylor SwiftOrleans Mayor’s Office of Cultural Economy Deputy Director Frederick “Wood” Delahoussaye. “Revenue from merch sales, hotel and restaurant earnings as well as additional tourism expenses had an estimated local impact in the neighborhood of $500 million.” Tennessee resident Eliza Hill, 26, who says she was lucky enough to attend one of Swift’s Nashville shows on the first leg of the Eras Tour in 2023, made the nearly eight-hour trek to New Orleans when Swift added an extra show in the city. “I drove to New Orleans and stayed at an Airbnb,” she says. Her trip to the city cost her at least $2,500 between tickets, the Airbnb, gas, food and drinks during her stay. The appeal to invest in another round of the Eras Tour, she says, was the way she got to experience every album and chapter of Swift’s life all in one concert, which featured 46 songs from her discography. “It’s hard to put into words how magical the vibe is,” says Hill. “Everyone is so happy to be there that everyone feels united. Not to mention, the whole city of New Orleans was celebrating the Eras Tour, from themed drinks at most bars to Taylor blasting from every bar on Bourbon Street.” As the city is set to host the upcoming Super Bowl LIX in February 2025, the arrival of the Eras Tour was a welcomed way to prepare for an influx of die-hard fans. The city created a Unified Command Group ahead of Swift’s debut, led by the U.S. Office of Homeland Security and the Office of Public Safety, to monitor activity taking place over the weekend. “The Office of Cultural Economy partnered with ASM Global to establish a cultural and Rideshare zone at Duncan Plaza, which included a new festival activation entitled ‘Embrace the Culture Festival’ highlighting local artists, artisans and culture bearers,” says Delahoussaye. In addition, the city upgraded the internet service at the Superdome and in relevant downtown areas, all of which was considered a trial run for Super Bowl LIX. To put the Swiftonomics in perspective, a 2023 Mardi Gras Economic Impact Study conducted by Tulane University Economics Professor Toni Weiss found that the globally renowned Carnival season brought an $891 million total direct and indirect impact to the city’s economy. “The Taylor Swift Eras tour was another incredible example of what we’ve always known — New Orleans is a world class city and our ‘built to host’ reputation is beyond deserving,” says Delahoussaye. “Our city is primed and prepared for Super Bowl LIX and any other world class events and gatherings.” Canada Following Swift’s European stint, the Eras Tour made its final appearances in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. The final shows took place in Vancouver over the first weekend of December at the city’s 54,500-capacity B.C. Place Stadium. Swift performed three sold-out shows in a row to 160,000 fans, providing an approximately $157 million economic boost to the city. Before then, six shows took place in Toronto November 14-23 at the Rogers Centre, attracting about 240,000 attendees. This activity resulted in an estimated $282 million economic impact, according to Destination Toronto. “Additionally, Moneris recently released their report showing that spending downtown surged by 45% during the concert period,” says Destination Toronto Senior Manager of Corporate Communications Kathy Motton. “Business travel is starting to wind down by late November and leisure holiday travel hasn’t quite picked up yet, so this impact came at a time that would normally be softer for local businesses.” The rush of local and international travelers gave the team a unique chance to try out new initiatives to engage travelers in everything the city has to offer. “The citywide energy really showed Toronto at its best, and demonstrated the power of major events,” says Motton. This level of fan engagement took place from the moment visitors arrived, as hotels, restaurants, bakeries and local businesses crafted special Swift- themed experiences to enjoy, resulting in an estimated $141 million in direct spending from out-of-town visitors and $11 million from local Swifties. “When iconic artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, or more recently Oasis and Coldplay, pick Toronto, they are recognizing the large fan bases here but also the city’s connectivity to other markets,” Motton says. “Toronto has a long history of successfully hosting major events. Now that Taylormania has passed, we’ve got our eye on the FIFA World Cup ’26 where Toronto will play host to six matches, kicking off in June 2026.” SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 93 Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour drew in over 10 million attendees and more than $2 billion across the globe. Images courtesy of TargetT ech disruption has become commonplace in every facet of life and commerce. Everyone is bombarded daily by new announcements of amazing new capabilities in generative artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity and predictive analytics. Yet how many of us are convinced that we can ask ChatGPT to choose the optimal location for our next manufacturing plant or distribution center? For now, the answer is a resounding “not many, if any.” Don’t we still want (and need) human experience to ensure that intangibles and key insights into market conditions and trends are not lost during location evaluation and site selection? The answer from these two humans is yes. Like most industries, site selection has benefited from advances in technology (many spurred by the pandemic), particularly from remote collaboration tools like video conferencing and project management platforms. We can now do more with less travel, facilitating scheduling and allowing broader participation by client team members. Drones are increasingly giving us better access to visual inspections of sites, before and during fieldwork. We’re even beginning to see virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tools utilized for introductory virtual visits, though this is still far from the norm. But every jaw-dropping headline increases the marketplace’s expectations that technology can answer strategic questions with the push of a button, which leads back to the question of whether AI is able — or soon will be able — to provide site selection decisions with a push of that technological button. Those of us in the industry recognize that by TRACEY HYATT BOSMAN, CECD, & CARISSA FOLEY, BIGGINS LACY SHAPIRO & CO. AI IN SITE SELECTION 94 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION AI Challenges Traditional Site Selection Could AI help you pick your next major facility location or expansion? Illustration by SurfUpVector: Getty Images SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 95 this question itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the site selection process: Namely, it’s about much more than “just data.” AI Isn’t Ready Yet In a recent survey on the topic, the Site Selectors Guild (SSG) concluded the anticipated benefits of AI are numerous, “including greater efficiencies through the automation of tasks, enhanced decision-making, and motivating an innovation mindset.” However, the report also warns of the potential pitfalls from sole reliance on AI, especially in the world of site selection, where a poor choice has dire consequences and relying blindly on online information is dangerous. In the SSG study, which was managed by Development Counsellors International (DCI) and conducted by a doctored professor of computer science at the University of Puget Sound, two basic site selection inquiries were tested on three AI platforms using “best practices” in the querying process. The first scenario was relocation of software company headquarters and the second was a manufacturing operation looking for a new facility to increase capacity. The three platforms tested were Google Bard, ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4.0. The result? There were commonalities among the shortlisted locations recommended by the platforms (with each other and with the human- generated lists) but there were also deviations, with recommendations varying according to which AI platform was used. One might be tempted to wonder whether AI knows something the human site selector doesn’t. But the inconsistencies in the AI responses disabuse us of that notion, as asking the same platform the same question multiple times yielded multiple and different versions of the short list. Why Human Expertise Still Matters Site selectors are as eager as the next industry to use AI to achieve greater efficiencies, but there are four reasons we do not worry about AI leading to our unemployment anytime soon: • Data Limitations: As past trends continue and evolve, more and more of the data metrics we use will be turned over to computers. That will be a welcome assist, but there will be limitations for the foreseeable future: • Location variables are often too customized and nuanced, and a detailed, online record of past and recent location decision-making is sparse at best. Artificial intelligence simply does not have access to the needed information, as it doesn’t exist in conventional databases. Nor has AI yet been trained to understand which tax rate or utility rate or industry classification to choose based on project parameters. Finally, unlike human site selectors, AI cannot yet pick up the phone, have a conversation and make a judgment call. • All data has limitations; professional site selectors study these limitations and, by applying our experience, know how to avoid being misled. For example, Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics data are sometimes not shared for a given market due to disclosure limitations. Further, building apples-to-apples comparisons of data across geographies of varying sizes and market dynamics is both a science and an art, honed by location decision-makers and site selection consultants over years of experience. Until and unless AI tools are sufficiently trained, they will lack the judgment necessary to reliably interpret data. Further concerns exist over artificial intelligence’s susceptibility to efforts to bias and/or manipulate online information in ways which could influence results. • Fieldwork Assessments: Computers are not good at the subjective assessments and interactive dialogues that comprise fieldwork. They cannot assess the business friendliness of a community. They do not have the ability to work with local zoning authorities and neighborhood groups to overcome potentially fatal project roadblocks. They are currently unable to predict whether relocating staff will enjoy a warm welcome in their new destination. Unlike human site selectors, AI cannot yet pick up the phone, have a conversation and make a judgment call.A version of this commentary by Tracey Hyatt Bosman and Carissa Foley published online in fall 2024 provoked the following response from Xavier Durand- Smet (pictured), co-founder of Lexa, a software platform designed for site selection firms, commercial real estate brokerages, corporate real estate managers and developers to interact with economic developers during a site search: In site selection, it’s not just about deploying AI — it’s about deploying it wisely. At Lexa, we enhance traditional workflows with AI to make the process smarter and smoother, not disruptive. We use generative AI to help the EDO answer RFI questions faster, and for the site selector to process and score hundreds of responses at once. Lexa’s approach to AI is simple: It’s here to elevate, not to replace. By replicating and enhancing core site selection workflows, we ensure AI serves as a powerful ally in achieving seamless, collaborative results. Site selection is intricate, involving massive data exchange across stakeholders under tight timelines, with massive workloads to fill the data and then analyze it. Lexa’s AI selectively streamlines this, amplifying the strengths of traditional methods to foster impactful decisions. If you think about it, few industries lend themselves better than site selection to the power of generative AI, but a prerequisite is that the AI serve the workflow rather than redefine it. AI should do more than crunch data; it should empower people. At Lexa, we use AI to refine specific stages of site selection, making interactions more efficient while preserving the human expertise that drives successful outcomes. We call it humble AI internally — we’re not reinventing the way things are done, we’re enhancing the existing way of doing things. Our mission isn’t to add AI for AI’s sake. We integrate AI selectively into site selection workflows to boost precision and collaboration, allowing stakeholders to focus on what truly matters: finding the best fit. 96 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION • Recognizing Opportunities to Change the Facts: AI cannot yet assess and predict the possibility of changing the facts about a location. It cannot, for example, recognize the potential to negotiate a new rate class for a large power user, or the likelihood that a permit could be expedited. As those of us in the industry know, no site is perfect from the outset. Perfection requires vision, as well as collaboration and negotiation with local leadership. Professional site selectors are experienced in managing these considerations, and we have the industry contacts and economic development relationships to explore and quickly determine what’s possible. • Consensus Building: Even the most rudimentary location algorithms are capable of scoring and ranking a set of competing destination choices. However, they are presently unable to facilitate consensus within the company’s management team without the intervention of a human site selector or similar advisor. The perspective of the CEO will inevitably be different than that of the HR officer, the CIO, head of operations or the CFO, yet each perspective needs to be considered, and the internal political context must be acknowledged before a sound location decision can be made. Site selection is about much more than data- driven outputs. It’s about multifaceted, strategic decisions that will impact a company’s future performance for many years. As long as humans are running companies, companies will be best served by human site selection experts — until the day comes when AI takes over the corporate boardroom. Tracey Hyatt Bosman, CECDCarissa Foley COUNTERPOINT: AN AI PROFESSIONAL’S PERSPECTIVEINTELLIGENCE REPORT TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY JANUARY 2025 by ADAM BRUNS AND ALEXIS ELMORENext >