Features

W ith a new round of U.S. military base closures on the not-too-distant horizon of 2005, more communities will be dealing with the accompanying job losses and subsequent base redevelopment. But that’s not necessarily bad news. Dozens of previously closed bases have been reinvented as centers of industry and research.         Since […]

T he most likely candidate for a location decision involving a new or expanded facility will be in the manufacturing sector, according to corporate executives surveyed by Development Counsellors International (DCI), a New York?based economic development marketing firm. More than 280 corporate executives participated in the exercise.         Forty-four percent of the […]

From Site Selection magazine, November 2002 NORTH AMERICAN REPORTS Edited by ADAM BRUNS Lilly Growing in Puerto Rico Too NOTHING COULD BE FINER: Eli Lilly executives join with local residents and community officials to break ground on a $450-million facility in Carolina, Puerto Rico. The plant is Lilly’s third major facility announcement of 2002, with […]

From Site Selection magazine, November 2002 WORLD REPORTS edited by ADAM BRUNS Alcoa Moving Forward on Icelandic Mega-Project In a deal worth an estimated US$1 billion, Alcoa Executive Vice President G. John Pizzey, Iceland Minister of Industry Valgerdur Sverrisd?ttir and national power company Landsvirkjun‘s Managing Director Fridrik Sophusson signed a memorandum of understanding in July […]

T ry to image a more daunting task than relocating a plant to another location. Better yet, to another country. Building a new plant is just part of the task. Relocating a plant also involves moving equipment, materials and production lines to the new facility — and disposing of the original site.       […]

Worldwide Practice Named Real Estate Law Firm Of the Year The law firm of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, founded in Los Angeles in 1951, was named the International Real Estate Law Firm of the Year at the Chambers Global awards in London, which honors the finest performers in international commercial law. Philip Feder   […]

T ony Miele’s job could be compared to that of the captain of a supertanker making a U-turn in a swiftly moving river.         Ontario Realty Corporation (ORC) for generations has served as the Canadian province’s property asset management arm, an agency charged with owning and operating facilities in which government ministries […]

From Site Selection magazine, September 2002 WORLD REPORTS   | CHINA | ENGLAND | MEXICO | EUROPE | AMSTERDAM | FREE AND OPEN TRADE | As Rest of World Shuffles, China Sprints Even amid widespread concern about too much reliance on China as the new industrial powerhouse, the capital and projects just keep coming.   […]

A fter a period of rapid growth, company managers may step back and ask if their current facilities structure — often haphazardly cobbled together through mergers and acquisitions and building on existing operations — can be rationalized in a strategic manner to more efficiently and cost-effectively meet the needs of the integrated firm.     […]

B roadband Internet access is rapidly being perceived by governments and business as an essential utility which will soon be as important as water or electricity to economic development. Cities or regions that embrace this concept and make this new utility widely available are variously described as being “intelligent, smart or wired.”       […]

TAMPA — IBM didn’t have to turn to its Deep Blue supercomputer to find the answer for this site location decision. It really wasn’t that complicated.         “The Tampa Bay Area has been a long-time focus IBM. We have many clients in this area and more than 1,300 employees involved in the […]

The mission of The Competitiveness Institute is to improve the living standards and local competitiveness of regions across the world by enhancing cluster-based development initiatives.         Our focus is primarily on regional clusters – geographic groupings of firms in the same or closely related industries. The Institute’s members are active in 38 […]

P hil Condit, chairman and CEO of The Boeing Co., knows a thing or two about the importance of infrastructure to economic development. After all, without the airports and transport systems providing access to them, his global, multi-billion dollar aerospace company wouldn’t be around.         “Economic growth follows infrastructure,” Condit told members […]

I BM and Cisco Systems call Beijing home. Now the plan for the Beijing Science and Technology Park Construction Company Ltd. is to recruit even more big names from the West to establish operations around China’s capital city.         The lure? Brand new, high-tech corporate campuses that are virtual “Science Cities” — […]

G etting e-noticed involves far more than simply replicating your organization’s brochures online. Economic development agencies in Europe ? that might previously have sat back and let their regions’ charms speak for themselves ? are increasingly adopting a far more polished approach. This might not necessarily involve investment in all-singing, all-dancing flash-enabled Web sites, but […]

H ow can you help your region grow when you’re busy managing your own growth?         That is one of several questions facing the economic development arms of utilities big and small around the United States. As a recent benchmarking and best practices survey by the Utility Economic Development Association found, utilities […]

E xecutives of the US$11 billion Computer Sciences Corporation understand the business benefits of outsourced services as well as anyone. The El Segundo-based company earned a $344 million profit in its 2002 fiscal year as an outsourcing provider of information technology services to corporations. Check that. Approximately $40 million of Computer Science’s 2002 profits came […]

I ‘ve saved this space to recognize some outstanding individuals in the corporate real estate profession — the seven winners of this year’s Site Selection Corporate Real Estate Leadership Awards, which were presented at the CoreNet Global Summit this past May, in Salt Lake City. With their permission, we will spotlight the work they do […]

From Site Selection magazine, July 2002 WORLD REPORTS   | SOUTH KOREA | MEXICO | AUSTRIA | PORTUGAL | SINGAPORE | SCOTLAND | Incheon Stakes Its Claim as Intelligent City In the first-ever U.S.-South Korean real estate joint venture, The Gale Co. has been tapped as a partner in developing the US$12.5-billion New Songdo Intelligent […]

Grubb & Ellis Growth in Services and Affiliates Inspires Investment Real estate investment firm Kojaian Ventures, based in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, has agreed to stake $15.2 million on the growing fortunes of real estate services firm Grubb & Ellis, a measure that would grant Kojaian the voting power of a majority stockholder. The investment will […]

J oe Moravec, commissioner of the Public Buildings Service of the U.S. General Services Administration, recently sat down with Site Selection’s Director of Publishing Ron Starner for an interview on the changing role of GSA and how the agency’s new direction will impact corporate America.         The linchpin of Moravec’s strategy is […]

W hen Concept Inc. went looking in 1988 for a site to manufacture arthroscopic medical devices, the company found what it needed in Largo, Fla., a town in the Tampa Bay Area on the Gulf of Mexico.         Today, the US$256 million-a-year company known as Linvatec employs 1,100 workers and occupies 235,000 […]

N ine out of 10 CFOs based in the U.S. believe that using outside resources to perform non-core functions increases shareholder value.1 Yet fewer than two out of 10 have empirically measured the return on investment (ROI) of their outsourcing initiatives. Those who have measured ROI report an average of 17 percent savings.     […]

T he queues were shorter, but the destinations more varied.         That is one conclusion to draw from the annual “European Investment Monitor” report from Ernst & Young. European new facilities and expansions dropped 12 percent in 2001, but it was a good year nonetheless for “gatecrashers, EU (European Union) accession countries […]