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| FROM SITE SELECTION MAGAZINE, SEPTEMBER 2021 ISSUE |
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CALIFORNIA
Poaching companies? California draws the line and ups the ante.
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INVESTMENT PROFILE: SAN JOAQUIN COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
IT initiatives underway around the region — including a unique data center — are adding to the arsenal of San Joaquin County’s business advantages.
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Northern Ireland
Atlanta-based labor, employment and business immigration law firm Ogletree Deakins last week announced a multi-year partnership with Invest Northern Ireland to establish a Global Solutions Center in Belfast. Paralegals at the center will work in tandem with the firm’s U.S.-based Immigration Practice Group to handle H-1B visas and PERM labor certifications, among other work for high-volume business immigration clients.With more than 100 full-time immigration attorneys, 200 paralegals and more than 100 additional support professionals, Ogletree Deakins’ global mobility practice is one of the largest business immigration practices in the U.S., and has seen revenue grow by nearly 60% in the last five years. Earlier this year, the firm announced a global alliance with KPMG Law in Germany to provide businesses with global workforce solutions. Ten years ago this month, Site Selection documented the site selection process of London-based global law firm Allen & Overy for a new shared services center in Belfast. That operation and others in the field have been expanding in Belfast as Brexit in order to help business navigate Brexit, among other motivations.
Mexico
As reported by Mexico Now early this month, electronics and electrical part designer and manufacturer TE Connectivity, which already operates two plants in the border city of Juarez, plans to open a third facility in the southeastern part of the city by the first quarter of 2022. The company says its products “connect and protect the flow of data, power, and signal – in electric vehicles and aircraft, digital factories and smart homes, and life-saving medical devices, efficient utility networks, and the global communications infrastructure.” The Switzerland-based company makes 192 billion products annually, saw 2020 sales of $12.2 billion, employs 80,000 people and operates more than 100 global engineering and manufacturing centers.
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| ILLINOIS INVESTMENT GUIDE 2021/22 |
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DCEO Q&A
Sylvia Garcia, acting director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, talks with Conway Custom Content Managing Editor Savannah King Yawn about the state’s invaluable strengths for growing businesses.
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INDUSTRY DIVERSITY
From food to pharmaceuticals, Illinois is home to a broad array of industries.
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SUSTAINABILITY & ENERGY
A large and growing EV industry charges the Illinois economy.
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| SITE SELECTION RECOMMENDS |
By now you may have read a handful of commentaries and a barrel full of social media comments about the U.S. Department of Energy’s solar power plans released last week. We always think it’s good to go to the source first. Among other findings, the Solar Futures Study prepared by DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and released last Wednesday projects that by 2035, “solar energy has the potential to power 40% of the nation’s electricity, drive deep decarbonization of the grid, and employ as much as 1.5 million people—without raising electricity prices.”
“Ramping up solar this dramatically is possible, but it will call for supportive policies and robust investments in solar generation, the transmission grid and relevant technologies,” says Brian Murray, interim director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and director of the Duke University Energy Initiative. “This is what it will take to further drive down the price of solar and ensure we can move electricity from where it is most cost-effectively generated to where it is used.”
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Last Friday, luminaries including building owner Joe Mansueto, founder and Chairman of Morningstar, Inc. and owner of the Chicago Fire MLS team, and veteran Chicago newsman Bill Kurtis gathered to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Wrigley Building. These photos taken nearly a century apart show just how groundbreaking the structure was in 1921 along a newly widened Michigan Avenue that was part of the grand vision of Burnham and Bennett’s 1909 Plan of Chicago. Today the building’s tenants across its 502,000 rentable square feet include Perkins + Will, medical technology firm Brainlab, the Nature Conservancy and Mid-America Real Estate Group.
Designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the Wrigley Building’s exterior includes 250,000 terra cotta tiles in six shades of white — “off white at the base and blue white at the top so the building looks brighter as it rises,” explains the building’s home page maintained by commercial real estate firm Zeller. The clock tower is patterned after La Giralda, the bell tower of the Seville Cathedral in Seville, Spain. “After it opened, the temple-like cupola on the 26th floor of The Wrigley Building served as a vantage point for viewing the city in 360 degrees as it rapidly expanded,” the firm explains. “The five-cent admission price included a stick of Wrigley gum. (The Wrigley Building offices still keep Wrigley gum on hand for visitors.)” No wonder one early observer dubbed the Wrigley Building a “Tribute to the Power of Human Jaws.”
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