Features

N orth Carolina is fertile turf for expansion-minded companies, finishing No. 1 in Site Selection‘s 2003 business climate rankings. The Tar Heel State’s potent site-selection kick was amply evident in R.H. Donnelley‘s decision to consolidate its headquarters in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. (reported earlier as the SiteNet/IAMC Dispatch‘s August Incentives Deal of the Month). In the end, […]

Site Selection: Congratulations on becoming Chairman of IAMC. What are your thoughts as you take over the helm of the association? Bob Zane: My desire is to put a lot more focus on process. The association has established a foothold and has started to grow and gain recognition. Now, it’s time we put a process […]

D epending on who’s talking, corporations are either hiding profits in tax shelters while states give away the farm with incentives, or, corporations are paying the lion’s share of state taxes and continue to prop up struggling state economies. Either way, each of the 50 states are taking aggressive measures to get themselves through an […]

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A s companies focus on their core competencies to remain in the black, there is greater incentive to turn to commercial real estate service providers to handle the real estate and facilities management functions.         Companies outsource projects to reduce costs while simultaneously gaining special niche skills and services such as lease […]

W Potlatch Corp.’s new distribution center at CenterPoint Intermodal Center on the former Joliet (Ill.) Arsenal property will soon be joined by the company’s tissue converting plant next door. hen Potlatch Corp., a Spokane, Wash.-based manufacturer of wood and paper products, began looking for a site for a new distribution center to serve its expanded […]

O rdering a computer, making an airline reservation or inquiring about a credit card bill increasingly involves talking with someone 12 time zones away.         Outsourcing of customer service functions by U.S. companies to the Asian subcontinent and to the Philippines is transforming the call center industry as firms move jobs from […]

entral to any region’s success as an economic center is its transportation and logistics infrastructure. This used to mean having rail, highway, air and sea access – even two or three of these could support key industries. But some areas are seeking to distance themselves from competitive locations and are re-evaluating the definition of transportation […]

here is a new wave striking at the shores of company distribution and transport networks. It’s called optimization, and its permutations range from consolidated and re-purposed warehouses to entire economic zones that one logistics expert calls by such terms as “technopolis” and, yes, even “multifunctionopolis.”         Those terms were coined by Franco […]

W hen Siemens Medical Solutions needed a corporate headquarters last year for its American sales and services divisions, PECO Energy provided the location data the company sought.         The result? Siemens moved its U.S. medical headquarters to Great Valley Corporate Center in Malvern, Pa., in Chester County, bringing 3,000 jobs and US$75 […]

M edtronic first came to the Netherlands 34 years ago when the Minneapolis-based medical device company was looking for a European base. The company grew steadily there and recently opened its largest distribution center in Heerlen, in the province of Limburg.         The Netherlands, selected by the Economist Intelligence Unit in March […]

T he global business scene is full of paradoxes. Here’s one: The market’s getting bigger, and the world is getting smaller. In the semiconductor industry, this yin-yang trend plays out in its own fashion. First, the wafers are getting bigger while the chips that come from them are getting smaller. Second, the plants that make […]

S ite Selection: Your recent comments on the need to re-evaluate certain incentives programs and the impact of state-vs.-state bidding wars over projects indicate that you would favor a change in public policy toward recruitment of large companies. Can you elaborate?         Gov. Sonny Perdue: We want to earn the business, not […]

S uppose you sold and leased back your office building 15 years ago and put the cash into your business. Say you received $10 million for a 50,000-sq.-ft. (4,645-sq.-m.) facility. Since you carried out the sale-leaseback in 1988, at the beginning of the economy’s descent into the 1990 recession, you might have offset a loss […]

n April 25, 1953 Francis Crick and James Watson launched the modern era of molecular biology with their discovery of the structure of DNA. Fifty years later, on June 23, 2003, President George W. Bush spoke at the Bio 2003 Convention Center and Exhibition and said, “Our biotechnology industry is the strongest in the world […]

A bout the time this issue of Site Selection reaches you, I will be finalizing remarks I have been asked to share at a Midwestern state’s annual legislators’ conference. “Competition” is the meeting’s theme, and my role will be to put that state’s relative competitive performance in the context of other states’ and to introduce […]

B oeing’s site search for its 1,500-worker, US$900-million 7E7 assembly plant has hit the home stretch, with Washington positioned as perhaps the place to beat.         As scheduled, Boeing on June 20 shut down submissions for 30-page proposals for the groundbreaking 7E7 Dreamliner plant, which touched off one of recent memory’s most […]

From Site Selection magazine, September 2003 WORLD REPORTS Edited by JOHN W. McCURRY Toyota Taps Thai, Aussie R&D Sites Ever-expanding Toyota Motor Corp. plans a Thailand-Australia research and development base to serve growing markets in Asia and Oceania. Both will begin operations in late 2004.         The Thailand facility will be in […]

  Dear Colleagues: Jack BrophyIAMC Chair It’s hard to believe that is has been more than a year since we launched the Industrial Asset Management Council (IAMC) with less than 20 paid members in an uncertain economy.         We have succeeded above and beyond our most optimistic projections and are on track […]

S ignificant growth in Masco Corp.‘s Delta Faucet division has prompted the expansion or initiation of several projects in the past 18 months. But few have been as influenced by Mother Nature as the construction of a new, 200,000-sq.-ft. (18,600-sq.-m.) central distribution center in Jackson, Tenn. Ground broke in July 2002 at a site adjacent […]

W hen is the last time you quantified your company’s entire real estate portfolio and its performance? If you haven’t done that in the past 12 months, then more than likely you are throwing money away.         That was the conclusion of Ronald P. Zappile, one of 15 presenters at a recent […]

T he effectiveness of state enterprise zone programs, which offer tax abatements and other incentives for businesses to expand or move to economically blighted areas, remains a source of debate more than 20 years after states began creating them.         Some state programs – like the Empire Zone program in New York, […]

I t’s less than a year before 10 new countries join the European Union, as the accession votes succeed like so many dominoes falling in a line. But they are not the only places active in attracting corporations: heretofore undervalued E.U. nations and the group of nations slated to arrive next are all making a […]

T he struggling economy battered the industrial real estate market over the past year and created opportunities for companies working to re-configure their supply chains. Many companies are taking advantage of these opportunities in the hopes of stealing a march on their competitors once the economy regains its balance.         Despite a […]