Investor Watch: August 8, 2024

AEROSPACE

Aerospace investments dot the U.S., including projects in 14 states from GE Aerospace alone.

AFRICA

As far as Microsoft and G42 are concerned, “AI” could well stand for “African investment.”

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By special arrangement, Site Selection presents and analyzes key aspects of a new Morningstar DBRS report on European data center locations, players, challenges and trends.

City Foundry STL in Midtown St. Louis is a prime example of OZs at work, transforming a brownfield property into a public market and community anchor.

Rendering courtesy of CliftonLarsonAllen Wealth Advisors

A new report from land, property and real estate data curator ATTOM released at midnight today examines qualified low-income Opportunity Zones (OZs) targeted by Congress for economic redevelopment in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. “In this report, ATTOM looked at 3,904 zones around the United States with sufficient data to analyze, meaning they had at least five home sales in the second quarter of 2024,” the firm explained. Among the findings: “Median prices of single-family homes and condos increased from the first to the second quarter of 2024 in 1,932 (61%) of the Opportunity Zones around the U.S. with sufficient data to analyze, while staying the same or decreasing in 39%. Measured annually, medians remained up from the second quarter of 2023 to the same period this year in 2,140 (62%) of those zones.”

Among states that had at least 25 OZs with enough data to analyze during the second quarter of 2024, the largest portions of zones where median prices increased quarterly were in Massachusetts (73% of zones), Maryland (68%), Oregon (68%), New York (67%) and Virginia (65%). States where median home values in OZs remained up most often year over year included New Jersey (81% of zones), Nevada (79%), Ohio (73%), New Mexico (69%) and Virginia (69%).

Site Selection analyzes OZs every year in its November issue. Watch for further analysis of ATTOM data and other OZ data sets in the publication’s November 2024 issue.

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The six-year renovation of Michigan Central Station by Ford Motor Company is emblematic of a region on the rise, as area GDP of $322.6 billion has recently outpaced national GDP growth rates.

Photo by Jason Keen courtesy of Michigan Central

Any regional economic development organization worth its salt musters some version of a scorecard that can inform stakeholders and outside prospects alike. The newest edition of one strong example — the Detroit Regional Dashboard covering 39 indicators across an 11-county region — was just released by the Detroit Regional Partnership and Detroit Regional Chamber.

Among the findings: While area GDP of $322.6 billion has outpaced national growth rates in the past five years, median household income, though up by 6.1% year-over-year, was still below the national average of $74,755 in 2022 at $71,265. Meanwhile, a population of 5.4 million in 2023 grew by 0.3% over the past five years, a lower rate than the national rate of 1.9%. As for corporate investment, the new edition features this striking statistic: “Domestic companies invested $4.4 billion in the Region compared to international companies at $4.6 billion in the past five year,” the Dashboard reports. “The top countries were the U.K. ($2B), Canada ($634M), Germany ($580M), and Japan ($158M).”

Photo courtesy of Nike

The film “Air” only told part of the Nike shoe’s story. Did you know the design of the Air Max 1 40 years ago was in part inspired by the inside-out architecture of the Centre Pompidou in Paris? Nike opened an “Art of Victory’ exhibit at the site in late July as the Olympic Games got underway, using the iconic building’s façade as the canvas for visual sports stories just as the entire city has served as a stunning canvas for the past two weeks of athletic feats. The exhibit runs through August 11. A story posted by the cultural landmark last year explores the fascinating and controversial history of the Centre Pompidou itself.