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CANNABIS & INDUSTRIAL HEMP
As America searches for sustainable solutions, industrial hemp provides answers.
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| FROM SITE SELECTION MAGAZINE, MAY 2023 ISSUE |
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EDITOR’S VIEW
Recalling the first time he wrote about AI … 35 years ago … Mark Arend considers the potential of the technology in the practice of corporate real estate.
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IOWA INTELLIGENCE REPORT
With commentary from Iowa Economic Development Authority Director Debi Durham, this report features economic development snapshots from each of the eight communities set to host 20,000 riders in this year’s RAGBRAI — the 500-mile bike ride across Iowa that is the oldest, largest and longest recreational multi-day bike ride in the world.
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Not everyone celebrates Economic Development Week the same way. Incentives critic John Mozena, the president of the Center for Economic Accountability who delivered this critique in this space last year and recently labeled Georgia’s Rivian deal the worst of 2022, decided this year to analyze job creation figures from every state’s chief commerce department or economic development agency. His conclusion? “American taxpayers spent enough on economic development agencies’ job creation programs to fund almost a dozen state budgets,” he wrote last week, “and we got, at best, one mid-sized city’s worth of jobs, spread thinly across the entire country.”
“I’ve called data centers one of the ‘three dumb things’ that states should just stop subsidizing entirely, along with stadiums and distribution centers.”
— John Mozena, President, Center for Economic Accountability
A lengthy methodology note, however, introduces a wrinkle. The question Mozena posed to the agencies was this: “How many jobs were directly or indirectly created (or ‘created or retained’ if that’s the metric you use) thanks to your agency’s programs in the most recent full fiscal year for which you have those figures?” Responses therefore would not account for the significant number of jobs created in a given jurisdiction that neither asked for nor received any programmatic subsidies or assistance. While we don’t always have a precise jobs figure to attach to every project in the Conway Projects Database, Site Selection counts all jobs created — program-assisted or not — based on the logic that an area’s sum total of tangible and intangible factors motivates a company to invest, and the area deserves credit for any and all jobs created.
This is not to say the CEA’s analysis is unworthy or a voice in the wilderness. There is plenty of fresh cold water being poured on rosy economic development reports. Good Jobs First can always be counted on for killjoy analysis, the most recent of which assailed $1 billion in data center subsidies awarded to Amazon, which the organization says has now collected $6.1 billion in subsidies in the U.S. overall. For its part, Amazon in April touted how much renewable energy its massive data centers in Oregon are using.
Among the data resources GJF offers are its thorough Subsidy Tracker (with 698,000 award entries) and its COVID Stimulus Watch database, which “assembles CARES Act and ARPA recipient data and combines it with information about each firm’s history of regulatory violations, previous government assistance, federal tax avoidance, and CEO and worker pay practices.” — Adam Bruns
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Ireland
Analog Devices Inc., based in Wilmington, Massachusetts, earlier this month announced this 600-job investment that will triple wafer production capacity at its European regional HQ in Limerick. The project is part of Ireland’s first Important Projects of Common European Interest on Microelectronics and Communication Technologies (IPCEI ME/CT) application to the European Commission. ADI currently employs 1,500 in Ireland and 3,100 across Europe as a whole. “Today’s announcement comes a year after ADI announced a separate investment of €100 million in ADI Catalyst, its 100,000-sq.-ft. custom-built facility for innovation and collaboration at its Limerick campus,” the company stated. “Ireland is also home to ADI’s main European Research and Development Center, which has generated more than 1,000 patents since its inception and has seeded ADI R&D sites throughout Europe in Spain, Italy, UK, Romania and Germany.” The new facility will support ADI’s development of next-generation signal processing innovations designed to accelerate the digital transformation of industrial, automotive, healthcare and other sectors. “Since 1976, Ireland has been a critical innovation center for ADI, thanks to its strong academic and research organizations, business ecosystem and progressive government leadership,” said ADI CEO and Chair Vincent Roche.
Japan
As reported by Nikkei and corroborated by Reuters, Samsung is looking to site a new chip development facility in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo, that will be separate from the Samsung R&D Institute Japan the company already operates there. Around $110 million in subsidies are thought to be in the works from Japan. The Nikkei report refers to the project as a “symbolic” move to showcase Korea-Japan collaboration. Samsung established its R&D Institute in the city in 1997, five years after starting up a small R&D office in Tokyo. The company has operated an office in Osaka since 2002.
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In a city where business is expanding at lightning speed, Union offers a Class AA employment centerpiece designed to attract and retain Fortune 500-level companies looking to plant a flag in the Phoenix-Mesa metro.
One 238,384 SF Union building is complete. At buildout, the award-winning plan will total four buildings and 1.35 million square feet, with amenities that mean the most to the upper echelon of corporate users:
- Transit-oriented at Loops 101 and 202, minutes from ASU and Sky Harbor Airport.
- Sleek design with modern lobbies, large floorplates, outdoor balconies and sweeping views.
- Spectacular sense of place with indoor/outdoor spaces linked to the waterfront Rio Salado Pathway.
- Surrounded by 1.2 million square feet of retail, hotels, parks, Riverview Lake, and Chicago Cubs’ spring training facility.
- Future buildings ranging from four to eight stories, and 232,000 to 450,000 square feet.
LEARN MORE: https://www.selectmesa.com/available-properties/office-space
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| MASSACHUSETTS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT GUIDE 2023-24 |
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CASE STUDY: DEVENS
MassDevelopment leads the revitalization of Devens.
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INCENTIVES
Team Massachusetts can help.
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| SITE SELECTION RECOMMENDS |
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Those seeking true insight into Chinese business, culture and talent issues would do well to follow the work of Cindy Yu, assistant editor of The Spectator and presenter of the Chinese Whispers podcast. Here she reports for Foreign Policy on a dilemma quite similar to what’s unfolding in the U.S.: Graduates of Chinese universities “asking where all the good jobs went” and rethinking the value of their university degrees.
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Photo courtesy of ITER Organization
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Dallas-based engineering and infrastructure giant Jacobs last month announced it was selected to design and engineer remotely operated tools for ITER, the world’s largest fusion power project, where an experimental machine (pictured) seemingly lifted straight out of the film “Contact” is currently being constructed in Provence, France. As Jacobs describes it, “ITER, which is supported by more than 30 nations, aims to create the conditions for a self-sustaining fusion reaction, which is a crucial steppingstone toward developing fusion power stations and creating a new source of emission-free, almost unlimited energy for the world.”
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