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Along the banks of what once was called the world’s most crooked river, a straightforward property deal closed in January in southeastern Michigan that will help keep a hometown company home and maintain a special community’s home all at once.

Reform of U.S. immigration policy is on the tips of so many tongues of all political stripes that it seems a foregone conclusion decisive action will take place soon.

Louise Story’s article in The New York Times last month is merely the latest installment of the longstanding observation that state and local incentives amount to a zero-sum game, whereby one location’s win is another’s loss.

The plethora of reports coming out only confirm what the public seems to already know and what policy makers in Washington are now grasping: Manufacturing matters.

The onset of the holiday season in mid-November brings two treats for the gourmand: the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau and the harvest of clementine oranges. But only one of those fits in a stocking.

Food's Future: A growing number of states want evidence of results to drive decisions about tax incentives for economic development.

Late last month, for only the second time ever, a sitting U.S. president formally blocked a foreign acquisition, due to purported security concerns involving the foreign firm’s deployment of wind turbine technologies near a 47,000-acre (19,021-hectare) U.S. Navy test and training site in Oregon.

"Great communities have the same underlying characteristics," says Richard Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class” and “Who’s Your City?” “They have a vibrant downtown, and they offer something for folks who are looking for something distinctly different."

Bob Kraft spends quite a bit of time in Asia, usually making a half dozen trips annually. He’s paid more than 40 visits since he founded Milwaukee-based First Pathway Partners in 2007. All of that travel is to recruit wealthy foreign investors interested in seeking U.S. citizenship through the Immigrant Investor Program, more commonly know as EB-5.

It’s not every day a billion-dollar project comes to Hawaii. After all, whatever you produce there has to be transported everywhere else. But the 50th state is part of a very select global club of locations whose conditions produce a rare commodity: transporting views of our planet and of the known universe it occupies.

This week marks the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking New Orleans. This summer marks a milestone in one company’s comeback from that storm’s devastation. MECO Inc., founded more than 80 years ago in New Orleans as Mechanical Equipment Co., announced in June that it would invest $11 million to construct a new 80,000-sq.-ft. facility at the Alamosa Business Park in Mandeville, St. Tammany Parish, La., that would create 127 new direct jobs, retain 81 existing jobs and result in 168 new indirect jobs.

Asheville, N.C., knows its hops and grains. The city has been voted Beer City USA four years running in an unofficial national poll, this year tying with Grand Rapids, Mich., for first place. An annual beer festival in the city quickly sells out. The area is home to more than a dozen craft breweries and brew pubs. And beer aficionados held the city’s first-ever Asheville Beer Week across 11 days in late May and early June this year because seven days apparently aren’t enough to celebrate the city’s culture of cold ones.

Last week more than 200 people from around the country attended an event at Willow Run, a signature automotive brownfield site in Ypsilanti, Mich., and one of 89 former General Motors properties in 14 states under the aegis of the Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response (RACER) Trust. It’s the factory where the inspiration for Rosie the Riveter worked, and a site that has been called “the world’s largest room” for its massive assembly floor space.

. Most of the world’s rare earths are produced and hoarded in China, whose government uses the elements as a lure to global manufacturers. (Molycorp, situated near substantial deposits in Mountain Pass, Calif., is among the few exceptions). But a new project might help rare-earth consumers and miners get their groove on in North America.

As a little girl, Susan Gibbs remembers visiting her grandmother’s coastline home in Rockport, Mass. There was the bronze bust of her grandfather, William Francis Gibbs, positioned as if he were staring off to sea. It would later prompt curious expeditions to the attic, where old newspaper clippings and photographs were pulled from trunks.

States trying to get a big corporate facility project across the goal line sometimes have to call special legislative sessions to approve incentive packages or other special statutory measures designed to cinch the deal. But in the interest of speed, recent years have seen an increase in discretionary incentive funds established for just this purpose.

Around mid-afternoon on April 27, 2011, Gregg Kennedy, part-time mayor of Smithville, Miss., completed his shift at his full-time job at the True Temper Sports golf club shaft manufacturing facility in nearby Amory. He drove straight to the Smithville Town Hall because of the threatening weather.

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Launched by news editors and journalists, this non-partisan, non-profit initiative is celebrated in mid-March each year.

Return to Sender: Redevelopment opportunities lurk behind the looming closure of hundreds of Postal Service properties.

Spring-Fed Optimism: Tumult in the Arab world does a favor for stable regimes.

Family Ties: North America’s easternmost corner aligns its assets and its megaprojects.

More Than Good Signs: Our downstairs neighbor moves on to a new worldwide headquarters.

The Pressure Builds: Need to go where the water is? Need to know where the water is? Either way, you need to read this.

Gimme (Fallout) Shelter: Construction is spiking way up these days for companies that manufacture fallout shelters. But the industry still maintains its way-low profile.