Investor Watch: January 25, 2024

In a sneak peek at the California Spotlight coming to the March 2024 issue of Site Selection, a CEO tells Ron Starner why his driverless shuttle firm is making the 6,500-mile jaunt from Auckland to Riverside.

COLOMBIA

Alexis Elmore reports from Colombia on how BPO and IT companies have hit their stride in a country known as the gateway to South America.

EDITOR’S VIEW

Conversations with a historian and a veteran site selector cause our editor in chief to reflect on how 70 years have only served to polish and deepen the appeal of our work to those intrigued by the role of place in global business strategy.

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Rendering Courtesy of NREL/Joshua Bauer

On Tuesday it was announced that the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation, and Conservation District will receive $426.7 million for the construction and maintenance of offshore wind infrastructure. The grant for the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind MVP (Minimum Viable Port) project comes through the Department of Transportation’s Nationally Significant Multimodal Freight & Highway Projects (INFRA) grant program, which received a substantial funding increase through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Site Selection Gary Daughters reported on the unique opportunity in Humboldt Bay in “A Eureka Moment for Offshore Wind” in the September 2023 issue of Site Selection.

Map courtesy of Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies

Among a plethora of other findings, America’s Rental Housing 2024, released today by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, reports that the number of renter households spending more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities rose by 2 million in just three years to a record high of 22.4 million in 2022, meaning half of all U.S. renters were cost burdened. Rent growth has slowed, but so have multifamily housing starts. The construction pipeline is promising: “A total of 436,000 multifamily units were completed in the third quarter of 2023,” a release states, “the highest number since 1988 and up about a third from pre-pandemic levels.” However, low-rent supply has dwindled, while homelessness has reached an all-time high.

A combined in-person and online event surrounding the report’s release will take place today at 4 p.m. at UnidosUS in Washington, D.C., featuring a panel discussion and a keynote address by White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden.

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Photo courtesy of IOC

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Olympic Winter Games, which began when 258 athletes from 16 national teams — including the helmetless hockey players pictured here — converged on Chamonix, France. Today the Winter Olympics involve up to 3,000 athletes from more than 90 national Olympic committees. “Of the 258 athletes in Chamonix, just 13 were women,” said a release yesterday from the International Olympic Committee. “Nearly a century later, Beijing 2022 welcomed 2,871 athletes, 45% of them women — a ratio which is expected to grow to 47% at Milano Cortina 2026.” In addition to creating a reputation for Chamonix-Mont Blanc that today translates to over 8 million overnight visitors annually, the IOC says hosting the Winter Games has benefited cities such as Sapporo, Japan, and Innsbruck, Austria, where the Tirol tourism industry in 2021 “directly and indirectly employed 60,000 people, generating around €8.4 billion.”