< Previous124 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION Share My Meals, a nonprofit based in Princeton and the driver behind the MRC, includes founding members Bristol Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk, Campbell Soup Company, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Capital Health along with Sanofi, according to an MRC press release. Historic Newark Hospital Revitalized as Workforce Housing in New Jersey Workforce housing projects are on the rise in the Garden State. In Newark, historic St. Michael’s Hospital, which has had portions of its campus remain vacant since 2016, will see its 100,000-sq.- ft. space be converted into new workforce housing apartments by Ellavoz Impact Capital, to be named the Newark Commons. Robert Hutchins, Ellavoz Impact Capital founder and CEO, stated, “The repurposed use of Newark Commons to support the higher education, young mobile professionals and health care workforce needs for affordable private housing will be another catalyst in Newark’s remarkable growth.” The original St. Michael’s Hospital, a three- story, red-brick structure, was started in 1869 and completed in 1871 on what is now MLK Boulevard. An addition to the building was made in 1888. The housing retrofit project has been in development for seven years, originally headed by Jersey firm The Hanini Group before changing hands to Ellavoz Impact Capital in early 2025. Ellavoz received financing from Cinnaire and Industrial Bank in the acquisition of the building. The project’s location is noted for its access to public transportation, universities, health care facilities and downtown Newark. The project will involve two interconnected buildings that served as part of the original hospital layout and have been vacant for nearly 20 years. Affordability for workers and students living in the area was one aspect considered for the project, which will have 43 new housing units with a total of 144 bedrooms. The ground floor of the building is planned to be commercial space with over 4,000 sq. ft. of retail space. The project will use Historic Tax Credits and Opportunity Zone funding, a federal tax incentive up for renewal in Congress intended to kindle investment in economically distressed communities. In May, the Planning Board in Plainfield unanimously approved a 36-unit apartment building project that will be completely made up of workforce housing. The three-story building will contain six studios, 14 one-bedroom units, 10 two-bedroom units and six three-bedroom units. Taylor Architecture and Design is leading the project, which is part of the 197 Scattered Properties Redevelopment Plan — a city-wide redevelopment initiative first formulated in the late 1990s that focuses on Plainfield properties deemed in need of redevelopment. Also in May, ground was broken on a 210- unit bayfront housing development in Jersey City. Jersey City acquired the 100-acre site in 2018 from Honeywell, with the goal of creating a mixed-income housing facility. The six-story building, called Bayfront Promenade, will include 74 affordable units for low-income families and 93 workforce units for moderate-income families as well as commercial space and 10,000 sq. ft. of community space. Bayfront Promenade was approved by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) Board in January 2025 to receive Aspire tax credits. Aspire is a gap financing tool to support commercial, mixed use and residential real estate development projects. Sanofi’s new U.S. headquarters in Morristown offers flexible workspaces encouraging teamwork and adaptability, state-of-the-art meeting and collaboration areas, modern amenities and access to community resources.TexasTexasECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONNECTION 2025 INTELLIGENCE REPORT128 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION Your T exas just released an economic development vision called “Blueprint for a Stronger Texas of Tomorrow” with target industries that cover the big stuff . But even conglomerates had to start up somewhere. One of the blueprint’s four pillars is a robust innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. For some, those buzzwords evoke university incubators, business accelerators and reimagined coworking spaces. Others just want a place to tinker. at’s where the Texas Economic Development Connection (TexasEDConnection) comes in. e growing group of small and midsized cities and counties and their allies across the state exists to do exactly what its name suggests: Make connections between mom-and-pop operations and the economic development resources that are just as available to the little guy as they are to the corporate giants. After all, even as major companies move operations and headquarters to Texas in record numbers, the state also keeps leading the nation in sheer population growth. Found in those numbers are small makers of everything from wallpaper to plastic parts, tequila to truck bodies. “ ese people are coming, they’re just not plugging into the system,” says Dave Quinn, founder of TexasEDConnection. “We’ve emerged as a place where you can move out of the garage. You’re tinkering but can’t grow where you are because of the restrictive environment you’re in. We thought there was that opportunity. If you join our group, you’re an active by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns@siteselection.com Abilene’s momentum includes a 1.2-gigawatt data center campus from Crusoe Energy Systems that will host one of the fi rst operations of “Stargate,” the $500 billion AI infrastructure investment plan from OpenAI and partners. Photos courtesy of Crusoe TEXAS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CONNECTION INTELLIGENCE REPORT SITE SELECTION JULY 2025 129 economic developer with real money wanting to help. Small manufacturers can come and build their dreams.” That applies whether you’re launching a candle business out of your sink at home or wanting to be involved with launching satellites. One champion fisherman — Gary Dobyns of Dobyns Rods — made the move from northern California to Texas and saw his high- performance fishing rod business immediately grow by 30%. “People contacting us are mainly manufacturing in nature,” Quinn says. “It makes a lot of sense when you think about cost of production. Companies want to grow and can’t afford to grow where they are. They’ve reached a point where where they are is no longer a desirable place.” So they begin looking to marry a business case with a quality of life case. A standard site selection RFI for a site consultant is the bare bones numbers, not the fluff. But the TexasEDConnection approach is “kinda the exact opposite,” Quinn says. “The building, yes, but tell me about your little league. Tell me about the festivals.” Small business owners are not looking up economic development resources,” he says. “They’re looking up where they want to live. That’s a theme for these small manufacturers. Quality of life first, then workforce, building and so on. There’s more emotion to it, more complexity than just picking the right spot logistically. It’s not about the digits and square footage and workforce numbers. It’s about the ability to connect at a human level.” AI Knows How to Find Abilene That said, the small town welcome mat still works even when your feet are big. After all, major players have humans too — even if their business is AI. Since January 2023, more than 80 major corporate facility investments have landed in TXEDConnection communities. The collective portfolio shows growth in cutting-edge technologies such as AI, advanced plastics waste recycling, storage batteries, electronics, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors. Here’s how the top performers break out by number of projects: T op T exas eDC onneCTion C ommuniTies by p rojeCTs j an . 2023-j une 2025 Coppell 15 Waco 14 Abilene 12 Kilgore 9 Bowie Co. (Texarkana) 7 Mount Pleasant 5 Wylie 4 Huntsville 3 Those projects include the biggest of the big: OpenAI’s plan to invest $500 billion over the next four years in new U.S. AI infrastructure. “We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately,” the company recently said of its Stargate Project, which includes initial funding from SoftBank, Oracle and MGX and technology partnerships with the likes of Arm, Microsoft, NvidiaA and Oracle. The deployment is taking concrete shape in the form of a 1.2-gigawatt data center site called the Lancium Clean Campus on the outskirts of Abilene, Texas. Lancium is an energy technology and infrastructure company that advances the decarbonization and stability of the electric power grid. Its partner is San Francisco-based Crusoe Energy Systems LLC, the vertically integrated AI infrastructure provider building the campus. In June, Crusoe announced it had secured a $750 million credit facility from Brookfield Asset Management through its infrastructure debt platform. “We are excited to partner with Crusoe, a company at the forefront of powering the critical infrastructure needed for AI, including one of the world’s largest AI data centers in 130 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION Abilene, Texas,” said Eric Wittleder, deputy CIO of Brookfield’s Infrastructure Debt business. Start putting a few dollars here with a few dollars there and you’re talking real money. Crusoe’s new credit facility from Brookfield follows a $600 million Series D funding round in December 2024, a $225 million credit facility from Upper90 announced in early 2025 and a $15 billion joint-venture with Blue Owl and Primary Digital Interactive to fund the Abilene data center. Reached via corporate spokesperson Andrew Schmitt, Crusoe CEO and Co-Founder Chase Lochmiller says, “We’re grateful for the support of the City of Abilene, Taylor County, and the Development Corporation of Abilene in bringing this vision to life.” The ORGANIZATION WEBSITE Andrews Economic Development Corporation www.andrewstxedc.org Big Spring Economic Development Corporation www.bigspringtx.com Boerne Kendall County EDC www.bkcedc.com Bonham Economic Development Corporation www.cityofbonham.org/163/BEDCO Bowie Texas Economic Development Corporation www.bowietexasedc.com/ City of Cibolo EDC www.cibolotx.gov City of Coppell Economic Development Division www.coppelltx.gov/232/Economic-Development City of Huntsville www.huntsvilletx.gov City of Sanger www.sangertxedc.org/ City of Smithville www.smithvilletx.org/economic-development/ City of Waco www.waco-texas.com/Departments/Economic-Development Development Corporation of Abilene developabilene.com Fairfield Economic Development Corporation www.fairfieldtx.com Fairview Economic Development Corp www.fairviewtexasedc.com/ flatfivemarketing flatfivemarketing.com Gainesville EDC www.gainesvilletxedc.com/ Gonzales Economic Development Corporation www.gonzalesedc.org Henderson Economic Development Corporation www.hendersonedc.com Jacksonville Economic Development Corporation jacksonvilletxedc.com Jarrell Economic Development Corporation www.jarrelledc.org Kilgore Economic Development Corporation www.Kilgore-edc.com Marble Falls Economic Development Corporation www.marblefallseconomy.com Marshall EDC www.marshalledc.org Mount Pleasant Economic Development Corp. www.mpedc.org Muleshoe EDC www.muleshoeedc.com Sitehunt sitehunt.io TexAmericas Center www.texamericascenter.com/ Wylie Economic Development Corporation www.wylieedc.com T exas eDC onneCTion o rganizaTions132 JULY 2025 SITE SELECTION the Development Corporation of Abilene (DCOA) first assisted in the expansion of Lancium into Abilene and Taylor County in 2021, when Lancium annexed over 800 acres into the city limits. Last year DCOA estimated that the direct and indirect economic impact of the initial phase of the project (the first two buildings) will be approximately $1 billion over 20 years. “The expansion to a total of eight buildings has the potential to scale that impact by many magnitudes,” Schmitt says. No wonder DCOA called it “Project Radiance.” In its most recent impact report, Crusoe notes that Abilene was chosen because of “its proximity to abundant clean energy and opportunity for on-site solar development. The company also is building a 350-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant at the site. “This approach accelerates the project’s energization timeline, enables the use of gas instead of diesel for long-term backup power provisioning and unlocks a reduction of both emissions and cost in the long run,” Crusoe states in the impact report. Lancium is building two new electrical substations among other infrastructure at the site. The project involves an investment of more than $3.4 billion for the first two buildings alone, 4 million sq. ft. under construction, 5,000 construction jobs and ultimately 400 new direct jobs. It will mean an estimated $22.6 million in City of Abilene property tax revenue per year (equal to 32% of the City’s current fiscal year budgeted property tax revenue) and $18 million in Taylor County property tax revenue from all eight buildings for 20 years. “Project Radiance is a testament to the strength of the Abilene and Taylor County economy and the long-term vision of our community,” said DCOA Looking for quality of life? Huntsville, Texas, which has welcomed recent investments from Equipmentshare.com, Zenner USA and Flaherty, is also home to Huntsville State Park, which welcomed this enthusiastic group of New Year’s Day hikers on January 1, 2025. Photo courtesy of Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept.Next >