In Ardmore -- which made headlines as a "right-to-lurk" location for runaway Texas legislators in 2003 -- the distribution industry continues to find a more stable home. Dollar General has announced a 30,000-sq.-ft. (2,787-sq.-m.) addition to its 1.25-million-sq.-ft. (116,125-sq.-m.) DC, and Best Buy has moved into its new 600,000-sq.-ft (55,740-sq.-m.) DC, with plans to expand it to 1 million sq. ft. (92,900 sq. m.). Meanwhile, Illinois-based Dot Foods, after a one-year search, has moved into Best Buy's former returns center, planning to add a 50,000-sq.-ft. (4,645-sq.-m.) freezer and cooler addition to the existing 120,000-sq.-ft. (11,148-sq.-m.) warehouse, plus a truck maintenance and operations facility on adjacent land purchased from the Ardmore Development Authority. The $12-million complex will employ 150 at build-out and serve customers in four states with between 3,000 and 4,000 products from 500 different suppliers. Dot also operates centers in Mt. Sterling, Ill.; Modesto, Calif.; Williamsport, Md.; Vidalia, Ga.; and St. Louis, Mo.
      "We started in late 2002," Jim Tracy, senior vice president and general counsel for Dot Foods, tells Site Selection. "We had done a logistics study, because the biggest cost in our business is transportation costs. We also had a long-term strategy to get close to our customers in order to shorten our lead times. Based on these two things, we determined we wanted to put a DC in Western Arkansas, Northern Texas or Southern Oklahoma. We hired CB Richard Ellis to help us search for sites.
      "Our first quest was to find an existing site that had a frozen warehouse, a refrigerated warehouse and a dry facility -- and that's kind of like finding a needle in a haystack," he says. "When we weren't able to find one of those at the right price, we moved towards finding a frozen facility, and didn't find one of those. So we moved on to try and find a dry facility, and that's when we found the facility in Ardmore."
      Twenty to 30 sites in all three states were examined in the process, including greenfield sites. And Tracy notes that both the State of Oklahoma and the Ardmore Development Authority had a can-do attitude and friendliness that rang true.
      "They went out of their way to convince us this was where we needed to be," Tracy says. "We liked the community -- most of our facilities are in smaller towns, and our headquarters is in a small town, so we relate better in those situations."

See the SITES Oklahoma Dept. of Commerce www.locateok.com The State Chamber www.okstatechamber.com Prosperity Project www.okprosperity.com Tulsa Metro Chamber www.tulsachamber.com Ardmore Development Authority www.ardmore.org Bartlesville Development Corp. www.bartlesville.com

      Work on the project should be complete by year's end.
      In early April 2004, Wal-Mart declined to move forward with a $48.5-million, 1.2-million-sq.-ft. (111,480-sq.-m.), 700-job facility in Wallkill, N.Y., "due to improvements in the overall efficiency of its supply chain." But at around the same time -- after a delay of some 18 months since its original announcement -- the company found reasons to expand that efficiency in the Oklahoma city of Bartlesville.
      Like the Dot Foods DC, the Wal-Mart facility will supply frozen and dry goods, but do it only for a radius of stores extending some 200 miles (322 km.), including stores in Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. And like the abandoned project in New York, the $60-million, 893,900-sq.-ft. (83,043-sq.-m.) facility -- due to open in May 2005 -- will employ around 700 initially, with the potential of nearing 900-1,000 employees within a few years.
      Bartlesville Development Corp. (BDC) purchased the land originally, and is building the infrastructure and facility to lease back to Wal-Mart for a period of 99 years. According to the Tulsa Business Journal, work was under pressure to begin in February 2004 -- otherwise Wal-Mart would have had to repay BDC for the land and infrastructure.
      The Norman Economic Development Coalition (NEDC) -- a partnership of the city, the city chamber of commerce and the University of Oklahoma -- used that tripartite power to help attract Essex, England-based automotive engine component manufacturer Albon Engineering and Manufacturing PLC. In April 2004, the firm announced it would make its initial foray outside Essex at a 200,000-sq.-ft. (18,580-sq.-m.), 200-job facility on 14 acres (5.7 hectares) in the Norman Business Park. Among the company's clients are DaimlerChrysler, Ford, Cummins and Caterpillar.
      The firm's five sites in Essex, encompassing some 400,000 sq. ft. (37,160 sq. m.), employ around 600 people. The 34-year-old company boasts of its ability to produce almost any form of engine component for gasoline or diesel engines, largely because of the flexibility inherent in its in-house design and manufacturing process. Finding both the existing skills and training resources in Oklahoma was therefore paramount in its U.S. site selection.
      Helping them along will be the university's Moore Norman Technology Center, which will train Albon employees under the auspices of the state Training for Industry program. The 200 jobs also qualify Albon for quarterly cash payments of up to five percent of new taxable payroll for up to 10 years, thanks to the state's Quality Jobs Act. In return, according to an economic impact study, Albon will have contributed some $3.3 million to the state and local tax base by the end of 2005.
      "Manufacturing jobs are some of the best jobs to have in a community because you bring in raw materials and produce a product and that brings dollars into the community," said Don Wood, NEDC executive director.