Features

I n a repeat of 2001’s one-two finish, Chicago and Detroit head up Site Selection‘s list of top U.S. metropolitan areas for new and expanded facilities in 2002. While the order and the approximate winning margin are the same as last year, the pace was off considerably. Both metros were off by about 300 total […]

T he enduring ditty etched on Alabama’s license plates has it wrong: It’s not that song’s stars that are falling on Alabama right now. It’s cars.         Current case in point: the 430-employee, 400,000-sq.-ft. (36,000-sq.-m.) plant that Hyundai Mobis has decided to build in Montgomery. Mobis’s first U.S. production operation, the facility […]

W ith 591 projects, the transportation industry again dominated the rankings of top new and expanded U.S. manufacturing facilities by industry sector in 2002. The headlines were led by the new Hyundai plant in Alabama, and backed by just-as-major plant expansions, including three in the top 10 from Michigan. It marked the fourth consecutive year […]

  Palm Harbor Program Finalized The Spring 2003 IAMC Professional Forum, slated for April 6?9 in Palm Harbor, Fla., has adopted the theme “Getting it Done Right: Industrial Asset Management Approaches to Proficiency and Profitability.”         Building on the success of the inaugural IAMC Professional Forum in Savannah, Ga., the keynote speakers […]

T he rest of the world is doing just fine, thank you.         That’s the message coming through loud and clear when analyzing the thousands of new projects that located somewhere outside the United States in 2002. And the rest of the world that’s achieving the most is made up of countries […]

“C harles McSwain is a master,” CSX Real Estate President Stephen Crosby has said.         But McSwain, a vice president at both CSX Real Property and CSX Realty Development LLC, deflects praise to others on his team such as colleagues Crosby and Randy Evans, CSX Transportation vice president of real estate and […]

W hen Graceland Fruit announced the US$15 million, 60,000-sq.-ft. (5,574-sq.-m.) expansion of a food-processing plant in the Traverse Bay area of Michigan in 2002, the news only confirmed what many corporate executives already knew about this location.         It’s the Top Small Town in America. According to the Conway Data New Plant […]

O ABOVE: In January 2003, crucial green lights from both the city council and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency enabled brownfield redevelopment work to move forward on this bundle of some 250 former industrial properties along the Rio Salado in downtown Tempe, Ariz. – the largest piece of undeveloped land left in the entire city. […]

S ynthetic leasing by its very nature is two-faced, an adjective most corporations are scrambling to avoid in today’s scandal-plagued environment. A corporate user gets to be the owner of an asset for income tax purposes and gets to treat it as an operating lease for financial reporting purposes. What could be better? The rent […]

E ight corporate real estate service provider companies have won Site Selection/ William Dorsey Service Provider Awards for work they did in 2002 that exceeded the expectations of their clients. These awards, now in their fourth year, recognize those companies that are helping evolve the definition of client service in the corporate real estate context. […]

I f you haven’t heard by now, the inaugural conference of the Industrial Asset Management Council (IAMC) in October was an unqualified success – highlights of the meeting in Savannah can be found in this issue’s IAMC Insider.         Attendees, who included corporate real estate executives and service providers, participated in a […]

From Site Selection magazine, January 2003 WORLD REPORTS edited by JOHN W. McCURRY Survey Says European Companies Prefer Switzerland as Headquarters Site Dr. Herbert Wanner A recent Arthur D. Little survey indicates European companies consider Switzerland to be the most attractive place for global headquarters location in Europe. The study also found that headquarters are […]

Pro-Business Bipartisanship Brings SCIENX Plant to Upstate N.Y. Politics may make for strange bedfellows. A major New York site selection decision, however, made for surprisingly cordial ones.         There on the dais, a mere six days before November’s elections, were Gov. George Pataki (R) and U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D), linked […]

    “I was very impressed with the content of the sessions. In each one, there was at least one nugget I could take away and apply to my own situation.” – Charles Veley, Director, Global Real Estate, United Technologies Corp., on the proceedings of the inaugural IAMC Forum in Savannah, Ga. Westin Innisbrook Hotel, […]

D evelopers of new facilities have a very basic decision to make at the outset of a project, be it a new manufacturing plant, a distribution center or any other facility. Will its impact on the environment be negative or positive in the long term? Those who choose to design and build a project that […]

  Dear Colleague: The Industrial Asset Management Council (IAMC) was founded this year to better meet the professional development needs of executives with corporate real estate and asset management responsibilities. As the organization’s first chairman, I am proud to be a part of the IAMC and to be associated with an extremely talented and dedicated […]

E rnst & Young’s six-month update to its annual European Investment Monitor report shows a slight rise in projects compared to the same period in 2001, driven by the resilience of the manufacturing sector, particularly in the automotive and software sectors. Unemployment in the Euro Zone’s 12 countries hovered at 8.3 percent at the end […]

W estern states are proving to be a natural habitat for gazelles, according to some recent research — not zoological research, but rather location research from Cognetics (www.cogonline.com), a Waltham, Mass.-based consultancy.         Gazelles are rapidly growing, publicly traded companies whose revenues have grown at an average annual compound rate of 20 […]

T hey say misery loves company. When everybody is having a bad year, then one company’s troubles don’t look so bad. But even in relative terms, Lucent Technologies, along with its telecom equipment and networking rivals, has endured more than most.         Lucent’s challenge of spinning off non-core businesses would have been […]

C orporate real estate executives from most of Silicon Valley’s high-tech companies gathered in early June in Redwood City, Calif., to participate in one of two Jones Lang LaSalle Leading Edge Series 2002 events to take place this year. Besides high-level presentations on economic forces influencing business decisions, the impact of changes in accounting rules […]

S teps taken to make the Tar Heel State even more competitive with surrounding states are paying off. For the second year in a row, North Carolina has claimed the top slot in Site Selection‘s annual business climate ranking. Among the measures helping to boost the state’s allure was passage in the state house of […]

S tate budgetary shortfalls have mirrored the U.S. economy at large over the past year, prompting many legislatures to adopt stringent measures to curb spending and maintain the tax base. Many held special legislative sessions in order to achieve some fiscal progress.         While some economic development branches have been streamlined, most […]

H opes were high at the beginning of the year that 2002 would see the start of a sustained economic recovery in Europe and the rest of the industrialized world. The figures for the first few months appeared to show that the optimism was well founded. The leading global economies grew at 2.4 percent in […]