Investor Watch: July 13, 2023

CBRE says these markets are focused on how to provide renewable energy for data centers. Plus, we list top global territories for recent data center development.

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Editor in Chief Mark Arend takes a close look at the Portrait of a Graduate visioning process developed by North Carolina and Battelle for Kids to ensure high school graduates have the soft skills increasingly required by employers.

INVESTMENT PROFILE: PFLUGERVILLE, TEXAS

Tollway opens Pflugerville to mega-projects and more.

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MESA, ARIZONA

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 1.35M SF, 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 1.2M SF 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 SF.

LEARN MORE: https://www.selectmesa.com/available-properties/office-space

In mid-June the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that more than 1,900 state and local governments that host federal lands will receive a total of $578.8 million in Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) funding for 2023. Because local governments cannot tax federal lands, annual PILT payments help to defray the costs associated with maintaining important community services. “Since PILT payments began in 1977, the Department has distributed nearly $11.4 billion to states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the DOI explained, noting that the department collects more than $26.3 billion in revenue annually from commercial activities on public lands.

“Individual payments may vary from year to year as a result of changes in acreage data, which are updated annually by the federal agency administering the land; prior-year federal revenue-sharing payments reported annually by the governor of each state; and inflationary adjustments using the Consumer Price Index and population data, which are updated using information from the U.S. Census Bureau,” says the DOI. A full list of funding by state and by state and county is available on the Department’s Payments in Lieu of Taxes page.

As one might expect, the dozen top states in total PILT funds shown here are located out west where there is vast federal acreage. The No. 13 state on the list, Arkansas, received around $8.2 million, or nearly $19 million less than No. 12 Washington.

Source: U.S. Dept. of the Interior

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Photo courtesy of NASA

This image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It was made available yesterday on the first anniversary of the telescope’s operation by Northrop Grumman Corporation. “As the prime contractor on Webb, Northrop Grumman led the design, development, and integration of this groundbreaking observatory,” said Tom Wilson, corporate vice president and president, Northrop Grumman, Space Systems, “and we continue to support its operations and maintenance as we explore the origins of our universe.” Check out all the images being produced by Webb.