Investor Watch: July 23, 2026

Featuring on-location reporting from Site Selection summer intern London Dinh, we look in on the action in downtown Atlanta before any soccer players showed up, and reveal which states and learning institutions earned the most medals at the SkillsUSA national championships.

RURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

“Rural communities and energy developers need each other,” writes Matt Merritt, director of public relations at South Dakota-based Paulsen. “So why does every meeting feel like a fight? Because trust was never part of the site selection process.” Community engagement can’t be the eighth item on the site selection checklist, he says. “It needs to be woven into the process itself.”

U.S.-MEXICO BORDER

A ‘Determinants and Drivers’ model offered by Avison Young’s Carl Quesinberry aids in identifying industry sector fits in six binational regions. Then learn more from Site Selection’s conversation with Quesinberry and colleague Peter Kroner in “Bonus Insights into the U.S.-Mexico Border Corridor from Avison Young.”

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Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub as of May had the capacity to serve an additional 17 million sq. ft. of warehousing and manufacturing facilities.
Archive photo courtesy of The Broe Group and Georgia Ports Authority

Yesterday, the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority (ECIDA), Effingham County Board of Commissioners and the Effingham County School District in Georgia announced that OpenAI is investing $20 billion in a new data center campus at the 2,600-acre Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub developed by The Broe Group and its subsidiary OmniTRAX in public-private partnership with the ECIDA. The project is expected to create 400 jobs as well as “significantly increase the local tax base, support infrastructure improvements, and support new and existing educational partnerships that prepare Effingham County students for careers in technology, engineering, skilled trades, cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing,” the organizations stated in a release, which notably contained no statements from OpenAI nor the park developers, nor mention of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Georgia Power or other typical economic development allies involved in major projects.

“Based on our focused analysis and close collaboration with the Effingham County School District and the Effingham County Board of Commissioners during initial feasibility discussions, we are confident this company will be an engaged community partner, a responsible steward of its investment and an important contributor to Effingham County’s continued prosperity,” said ECIDA CEO Brandt Herndon, whose voice extolling the virtues of regional gateway partnerships in the coastal Georgia region first appeared in Site Selection in a full-length 2012 Investment Profile commissioned by the State of Georgia and appropriately titled “Gateway to Opportunity.”

The Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub itself, which as of May had the capacity to serve an additional 17 million sq. ft. of warehousing and manufacturing facilities, was the subject of a 2018 Site Selection Investment Profile presciently called “Georgia Game-Changer.”

An open house for the public to learn more about the OpenAI project is scheduled for this evening from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Effingham College & Career Academy, whose work cultivating the workforce of the future was documented in the March 2024 Investment Profile titled “Southeast Georgia’s Next Generation Is Ready for Growth.”

Ready or not, here it comes. —Adam Bruns

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The announcement of the new tariffs caused a scheduled joint, binational opening ceremony for the Gordie Howe International Bridge to be postponed yet again. However, a Canadian ceremony will go on as scheduled on Friday, July 24. A multi-use path on the bridge will offer free access to pedestrians, runners and cyclists on August 5.
Photo courtesy of Gordie Howe International Bridge

Looking for guidance in the wake of the 50% tariffs announced three days ago by the United States federal government on a wide range of Canadian imports? Look no further than Laura Dawson at the Future Borders Coalition, who issued a rapid response memo on Tuesday about “what has changed, what has not and what businesses should do now.”

“These tariffs cover roughly US$20 billion of the US$382 billion in total Canadian goods exports to the U.S. in 2025 — about 5%,” she writes. “For the country, that’s manageable. For an individual business in an affected sector, it can be significant.” Among other advice, she then counsels, “Don’t let anger drive decisions. Business logic, not emotion, is what protects your business through uncertain times.”

Photo courtesy of Boeing

Amid throngs of delegations from around the world attending the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom this week, Boeing released its 2026 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), forecasting that operators will need nearly 44,000 new airplanes to support sustained air travel demand and air cargo expansion over the next 20 years. “The global commercial airplane fleet is expected to grow nearly 80% to more than 50,000 airplanes by 2045 as airlines and cargo operators add capacity,” the company stated in a release. “Transitioning and emerging markets, like China, the Middle East, Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, will make up about 55% of new deliveries.”

Boeing has released the outlook report every year since 1961. But of course the company’s history goes back well beyond that year: Boeing celebrated its 110th anniversary last week. Deep in Boeing’s media archives we found this photograph from the company’s original Red Barn, aka Plant 1, where seamstresses sewed cloth wings for the company’s first aircraft. The site closed in 1970 but is preserved at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. William Boeing purchased the original land (a shipyard on the Duwamish River) from a yacht customer in 1910.