W hat a difference a few years can make. Ten years ago, Mexico, by most accounts, was a third-world country. But since the opening of North American trade through NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), Mexico has become a fast-growing economy and a much-sought-after spot for corporate locations.         In fact, Mexico […]

W ASHINGTON — It didn’t take long for President Bush to face his first “crisis” in the Oval Office — how to deal with California’s widespread energy shortages.         One group that hopes Bush acts quickly is the Building Owners and Managers Assoc. International (BOMA), the nation’s largest lobbying organization for corporate […]

Serviced Office Provider Sets Franchising Plan R egus Business Centres (www.regus.com), a major provider of serviced office space, is introducing a franchising plan for select organizations and individuals. Franchise owners can create their own office environment, letting them use the space their business requires while devoting the remainder of their workspace to income generation.   […]

O ne theme underlying Jones Lang LaSalle’s Corporate Real Estate Leadership Forum in October 2000 was the similarity of experiences among real estate managers no matter where they are based. Crafting effective relationships with business units remains a top priority of all, for example, as do managing shareholder expectations and balancing time pressures. Another common […]

M illions of dollars of sales can be earned by timely delivery of an e-business facility–or lost if the effort gets mired in delay. Herein lies the importance finance and operations management place on accelerating the start date for billing of services. Although lowest facility delivery cost may feel increasing pressure in 2001, management’s overriding […]

S oftening economic conditions are bringing into focus the role of incentives in closing large project deals, according to experts who follow trends in this area. Several years of economic expansion and high demand for real estate have tempered municipalities’ need to stress incentives in their negotiations.         “Across the board, the […]

I t’s no secret where the big bucks migrated in last year’s economic development race for large corporate facilities. The biggest deals, by far, involved the location of semiconductor manufacturing plants for the computer chip industry.         Just as processing speed and computing power continually increase with breakthroughs in wafer fabrication technology, […]

A new plant or facility in a struggling community can have a dramatic effect. So can the location of a fresh industry in an area previously unidentified with that specific business. These breakthrough facilities impact their communities by bringing new jobs, new industry and often new opportunities.         With the slowdown in […]

Big decisions are rarely an easy task, especially when hundreds of millions of dollars and a company’s future may depend on them. Investments like Intel’s US$2 billion expansion in New Mexico or IBM’s $2.5 billion in East Fishkill, N.Y., aren’t decided with a blindfold, a dart and a map. No, instead many hours of research […]

E conomic development organizations worldwide are designing novel programs to enhance their appeal. From interactive web sites and work-force development plans to invent finance and tax incentives, local officials are creating new and innovative programs to lure business expansions and developments. In the slowing economy, these plans are developed to distinguish each individual community and […]

RIO RANCHO, N.M. — S itting on a hillside perch overlooking this town just north of Albuquerque, the 5,500-employee Intel Corp. campus casts an imposing shadow over the area economy.         That shadow is about to grow even larger, as Intel (www.intel.com) embarks on a US$2 billion, 1,000-worker expansion of its semiconductor […]

N on-European firms seeking to establish a call center in Europe faced relatively few obstacles in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They opened individual centers in whichever countries they felt the need to be in. By today’s standards, the centers were generally low-tech, and the notion of networking multiple centers had yet to catch […]

Editor’s Note: The following report was prepared by Jan Smit, senior consultant for International Location Advisory Services at Ernst & Young in London (jsmit@cc.ernsty.co.uk). G ermany is the economic powerhouse of Europe. It has a highly educated population, registers a high percentage of European patents and overall presents an interesting proposition to high tech-inward investors. […]

T he California blackouts and the state’s continuing electricity crisis took center stage at the IOU-EDA Winter Forum, held on Feb. 21-23 in San Diego, and these problems bring to the surface an important question for site selectors: Will utilities in a deregulated market be capable of providing the service my company needs? Many technology […]

D ETROIT — It wasn’t that long ago that pundits and pols alike were lamenting the demise of the Motor City and the state to which it belongs.         There is little such talk now. Winning Site Selection magazine’s coveted Governor’s Cup for a record fourth year in a row (see the […]

A bstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. “Digital Darwinism: Strategies for Evolving, Adapting, Surviving and Thriving in an e-Business World,” Florida World Congress, Nov. 6, 2000:         The companies that evolve the quickest and adapt to the new e-business landscape […]

A banner year for the Volunteer State came to an end as the man responsible for a large portion of Tennessee’s economic success stepped down from his post to return to the private sector.         On the same day that Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist announced that his state had achieved a record […]

T he “Wild, Wild West” mentality of Nevada may not be kind to your pocketbook if you’re a high-stakes gambler, but it just might be your best friend should you decide to launch and grow a business there.         According to the annual Cognetics ranking of “Entrepreneurial Hot Spots,” Nevada is the […]

“U p until a few years ago,” says Frank Shepherd, “There were three ways of getting work done. Fixed offices took up 95 percent of the time, mobile work took up 3 percent or 4 percent and teleworking (permanent home-based working) was barely 1 percent. Today hybrid areas are emerging, as are nomadic touchdown satellite […]

N aysayers predicted havoc when the British handed over Hong Kong to Mainland China in 1997. But instead of Red Chinese soldiers charging in to take control, the floodgates opened the other direction. Hong Kong capitalists living in this landlocked economic powerhouse began pouring large sums of money into South China.         […]

I n the new global supply chain — reduced by globalizaton and falling trade barriers — the crunch to shrink costs is driving world-class industries to position production facilities strategically closer to raw materials sources.         Low-cost development zones are emerging to accelerate the reverse migration and few industrial sectors have been […]

W hen Lee Arnold talks about the impact of the Internet on corporate real estate executives, he uses phrases like “fast-moving flexibility,” “blurring of the lines,” “bandwidth access” and “the barrier of inertia.” With Arnold, information technology chairman for global service provider Colliers International (www.colliers.com), the concepts of speed and transition aren’t just fodder for […]

Fast Track Project Management WorkPlaceUSA (www.workplace-usa.com), a Dallas-based provider of project management and other real estate services, is using an Internet-based project management system from Citadon (www.citadon.com), San Francisco, to facilitate the simultaneous creation of 13 network information centers for WorldCom. The $900 million effort involves building 12 centers totaling 1.3 million sq. ft. (120,700 […]

T he corporate real estate industry’s service provider community is in the midst of a heightened state of “convergence” if the past few months are any indication. Late 2000 saw numerous alliances and acquisitions that support a theory put forward in the Site Selection January 2001 cover story, “E-Business Levels the Real Estate Playing Field”. […]