< Previous138 MARCH 2025 SITE SELECTION GEORGIA MICROPOLITANS WITH QUALIFYING PROJECTS Key Rank Micropolitan Projects A T12 Moultrie, GA 6 B T19 LaGrange, GA-AL 5 C T19 Thomasville, GA 5 D T19 Vidalia, GA 5 E T27 Jefferson, GA 4 F T27 Waycross, GA 4 G T39 Americus, GA 3 H T39 Bainbridge, GA 3 I T39 Dublin, GA 3 J T70 Cedartown, GA 2 K T70 Douglas, GA 2 L T70 Fitzgerald, GA 2 M T70 Statesboro, GA 2 Source: Conway Projects Database B G H I J K M L A D F E C SITE SELECTION MARCH 2025 139 Johnson & Johnson announced its blockbuster project in October. The company is investing $2 billion in a 300,000-sq.ft. biologics facility at the 560-acre Wilson Corporate Park, whose life sciences tenants include Merck, Fresenius Kabi, Purdue and Neopac. Johnson & Johnson has committed to creating 420 highly skilled jobs for engineers, microbiologists, analysts and managers. “North Carolina,” said Dapo Ajayi, J&J vice president of Innovative Supply Chain, “is an important hub for biopharmaceutical manufacturing and talent, and we are pleased to join this thriving life sciences ecosystem and become part of the Wilson community.” Headquartered in Mainz, Germany, SCHOTT will join German life sciences manufacturers Merck and Fresenius Kabi in Wilson County. SCHOTT’s Wilson location, its seventh in the U.S., will be its first to manufacture prefillable polymer syringes designed for deep-cold storage and transportation of mRNA medications. “Bringing this production to the U.S.,” the company said in statement, “will reduce lead times and slash transportation costs, as well as protect against future shortages of critical drugs and ensure pandemic preparedness.” SCHOTT says the site will also have the capability to produce glass prefillable syringes for GLP-1 therapies to treat diseases including diabetes and obesity (i.e. the sort that are manufactured in the state by the likes of Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk, both of which are also expanding). The $371 million investment is expected to yield 401 full-time jobs. The company said it did a nationwide search for its new U.S. location.140 MARCH 2025 SITE SELECTION “The local talent pool,” said Christopher Cassidy, president of SCHOTT North America, “combined with the proximity to the Research Triangle area — which hosts numerous universities, pharma companies and research institutions — are ideal factors for the future operation of the company.” To facilitate the IDEXX project, the North Carolina Department of Commerce and Economic Development partnered with Wilson County, the city of Wilson, the North Carolina Community College System and ElectriCities of North Carolina. The animal health company based in Westbrook, Maine, will invest $147 million to produce veterinary diagnostic products. Announced in July, the investment is projected to create 275 jobs. Based in Slough, England, Reckitt Benckiser Health will invest $146 million to produce its popular Mucinex tablets and liquids to meet increasing demand for cold and flu products in the U.S. The 310,000-sq.ft. Wilson facility will also have the capacity to produce over-the-counter medications including Move Free and Biofreeze, making it Reckitt’s biggest OTC manufacturing facility in the U.S. “Our highly skilled workforce, which includes the largest manufacturing workforce in the Southeast, continues to attract companies such as Reckitt, who are looking for skill and innovation,” said Christopher Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina. “Wilson County’s life science ecosystem and existing resources are major attractors and provide a strong foundation for life science manufacturing companies to grow.” Germany’s SCHOTT Pharma is bringing production to North Carolina. Photo courtesy of SCHOTT Pharma SITE SELECTION MARCH 2025 141 Planning Pays Off in West Georgia As one of the Georgia micropolitans identifi ed in Site Selection’s ranking, the West Georgia town of LaGrange — also tied at No. — landed a massive project of its own. In June, Hong Kong’s Lee Kum Kee, maker of hundreds of sauces and condiments including the ubiquitous Kikkoman Soy Sauce, announced plans for a $ million manufacturing facility at Troup County’s Georgia International Business Park. Covering some , acres, it’s the largest industrial park in the Southeast and fourth largest in the country. Lee Kum Kee is projected to create jobs there. “International companies continue to fi nd success in Georgia because of long- term state and community planning like the Georgia Industrial Business Park,” said Pat Wilson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. “Since opening just fi ve years ago, it is now home to more than international companies representing countries. LaGrange and Troup County’s foresight is paying dividends for their community.” e Lee Kum Kee facility will serve to satisfy the company’s growing need for an East Coast manufacturing presence, its previous such facilities found only in California. e recruitment was nearly a decade in the making, according to Scott Malone, president of the Development Authority of LaGrange. “It was one of the longest-running projects in the history of Georgia,” Malone LaGrange and Troup County’s foresight is paying dividends for their community.” — Pat Wilson , commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development LaGrange and Troup County’s foresight is paying dividends 142 MARCH 2025 SITE SELECTION told Site Selection in February. “It grew from $70 million to $288 million, they had a generational change in leadership, and then the pandemic got in the way. But for Lee Kum Kee, this is a very strategic project. Their business is booming.” Formerly tied nearly exclusively to the textile industry, the LaGrange MSA also includes Kia Georgia, which has invested close to $3 billion since its inception in 2009. Having expanded in 2023 to the tune of $200 million to support EV production, the Kia plant and the suppliers that have followed it to Troup County account for more than 14,000 jobs and provide an annual economic impact estimated at $4 billion. But Georgia International Business Park has proved to be its own game changer, having attracted investments totaling more than $3.3 billion since its consolidation in 2018. Already in 2025, Kia supplier Jin-Tech America has announced a $30 million expansion that’s to create at least 30 new jobs at the park. The pace of new projects has put LaGrange in an enviable position. “We’ve turned down right around $1.5 billion of projects in the last 12 months,” says Malone. “If the starting wage isn’t at least $18 an hour, we won’t incentivize it. We’ve gotten to where we have the luxury of being selective.” LaGrange is one of Georgia’s 13 Top Micropolitans. Photo courtesy of Development Authority of LaGrangeAGRIBUSINESS Is the zeitgeist right for ‘agrihoods’? Fox Point Farms in Encinitas, California Photo courtesy of Nolen Communities/Stephen Whelan Something Old Made New Again Something Old Made New Again SITE SELECTION MARCH 2025 143 W ould you rather invest in a golf course community or one where valuable property is profi tably used to grow food? “Agrihoods” are gaining steam as an alternative real estate strategy targeting affl uent, younger demographics that are jazzed by the prospect of living and raising families among nature and abundant, organic food sources. According to the Urban Land Institute, there are now about “agrihoods” in more than states across the United States, with such developments increasingly popping up not just in rural areas but also in proximity to major cities. ULI defi nes agrihoods as “single-family, multifamily, or mixed-use communities built with a working farm or community garden as a focus.” In Encinitas, California, on the site of a former poinsettia farm, construction is nearing completion on a $ million mixed-use coastal enclave described by its backers as the fi rst agrihood of its kind in scale and caliber. Fox Point Farms is the vision of Brian Grover, founder and managing partner of Nolen Communities, in partnership with Shea Homes, one of the nation’s largest private home builders. “ e potential for agrihoods is enormous,” says Grover. “Consumers are increasingly drawn to more sustainable, community-centric models of living, and agrihoods meet that demand. ey off er more than just homes. ey provide a deeper connection to the land, a unique revenue model through the integration of working farms and public amenities, and a chance to get away from the cookie- cutter master-planned communities we’ve seen for so long.” by GARY DAUGHTERS gary.daughters@siteselection.comBringing It All Back Home Grover traces his interest in the agrihood concept to a course he took at the University of California San Diego in the early s on the history of urban sprawl. It steered him toward a minor in Urban Studies and Planning and then a graduate degree from the University of North Carolina. “It was intriguing to me,” Grover told Site Selection in February, “to learn about post-war suburban development and how it led to all these psychological eff ects that are coming to the fore now, like social isolation. e vision for Fox Point Farms has always been to reconnect people to each other and to the land, and to create a sustainable, resilient community that can serve as a model for future development. It’s how most everybody lived a hundred years ago, and so it’s not a novel concept. It just seems that way because we’re so far removed from how people used to live and feed themselves.” e -acre development is centered around an eight-acre commercial center, close to half of which is devoted to an organic farm that yields fruits and seasonal vegetables. Everything raised there stays within Fox Point Farms, which includes a farm- to-table restaurant, organic market, farm-to-tap brewery and coff ee roaster, plus hands-on farming and educational programs with farm animals. at’s all up and running. Well underway is construction on homes to include cottages, trails. Nolen says nearly all of the homes are under contract, making Fox Point Farms one of Shea’s best-performing communities from a sales standpoint. ‘The Kids Are Running the Show’ Daron “Farmer D” Joff e is one of Grover’s mentors. He is widely touted as one of the country’s most experienced agrihood designers, having consulted on projects including Southern California’s formative Rancho Mission Viejo and the wildly successful Serenbe, southwest of Atlanta. Other standout agrihood communities include Agritopia, near Phoenix; South Village in South Burlington; Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Illinois; and Hidden Springs in Boise, Idaho. ere are agrihood projects that have failed, and others that have fallen well short of what was promised in marketing materials and presentations to zoning offi cials and tax authorities. “Green washing” is out there. “I’ve seen projects before,” says Grover, “where it was little more than a shtick to get it approved by the community and city council and then the shtick would largely go away. I got a little bit disillusioned when, post approval, a lot of what we would put into site plan would get stripped. I always wanted to do a project the right way, and that became my business model for Nolen Communities. “I take some solace,” he says, “in the fact that the kids are running the show now. It’ll be cool to see the evolution of this concept, which is really something very old made new again. 144 MARCH 2025 SITE SELECTION e potential for agrihoods is enormous.” — Brian Grover , Managing Partner, Nolen CommunitiesSTATE SPOTLIGHT 146 MARCH 2025 SITE SELECTION by RON STARNER ron.starner@siteselection.com The Preserve at Harbison is a master-planned community in Vacaville. Photos courtesy of City of Vacaville A n infusion of $. billion in capital into the world’s largest biopharmaceutical manufacturing site is positioning a mid-sized city in Northern California to become a global leader in next-generation life-sciences technology. Lonza AG of Switzerland is buying the old ,-sq.-ft. Genentech plant from Roche for $. billion and planning to invest another $. million into the site to create one of the biggest drug-making operations in the world. How Vacaville became a biotech boomtown in the Bay Area. SWISS DRUG MAKER BANKS ON THE GOLDEN STATE California SITE SELECTION MARCH 2025 147 BY THE NUMBERS CALIFORNIA Higher Ed. R&D Expenditure in $000s:$12,867,611 Number of NCRCs:30,278| Percent Improved 2023–24: 12.97% Business Tax Climate Rank Change 2024–2025: 0 Industrial power cost per kWh:18.64 ¢ Total Rev. as Share of Total Expenses, FY 2008-22: 100.91% 2024 Workers’ Comp Index Rate: 2.26 Selected Top Projects by Capital Investment COMPANY CITY INVESTMENT $M Lonza AG Vacaville 1,700 East End Studios Los Angeles 230 ASE Technology Holding Co. San Jose 200 Fashion Nova Beverly Hills 118 Chula Vista Ent. Complex LLC San Diego 858 Source: Conway Projects Database at the plant is located in Vacaville, a Solano County city of , people midway between San Francisco and Sacramento, is no accident. For decades, Vacaville — named after Juan Manuel Vaca, one of the fi rst two settlers in the area — has served as one of America’s top destinations for the brightest minds in biotech research and development. Described by Lonza as a “large-scale mammalian facility,” the Vacaville plant currently employs full-time workers, but could soon add new hires as Lonza ramps up. Coming off a in which Lonza registered US$. billion in total sales, the fi rm says it plowed % of that (about $. billion) into capital investment “to enable future growth across technologies.” e Basel-based company founded in said the acquisition of the California plant — completed on October , — made sense because “it creates a signifi cant West Coast commercial manufacturing presence close to San Francisco’s pharma and biotech hub, complementing Lonza’s CALIFORNIA BIOTECH SECTOR AT A GLANCE 16,576 life sciences establishments $146,088 average annual worker wages $59.6 billion annual private investment into biotech $34.1 billion in venture capital raised 7,343 patents fi led (continued on p. ) Source: Biocom CaliforniaNext >