L ong before I ever covered corporate real estate, I had already developed a sort of “connection” with it — with some specific real estate at least. I’m thinking here of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, which loomed over my early career in the city’s financial district.         […]

 N EW YORK — Don’t be fooled by the NASDAQ. High-technology, digitally driven companies are still the crown jewel of economic development, according to a study by KPMG LLP’s Strategic Relocation and Expansion Services practice.         The survey of state and local economic development agencies revealed that an overwhelming 97 percent of […]

 C orporate real estate executives seeking a site for Asia-Pacific regional headquarters operations are taking a second look at Brisbane.         The state capital of Queensland on the East Coast of Australia, Brisbane is rapidly joining the ranks of Sydney and Melbourne as a true economic powerhouse in the Land Down Under. […]

 A n increasing number of executives in the property market across Europe are convinced high tech will reconfigure relationships in the entire real estate community, from users and providers to contractors and owners. The recession, many feel, will even accelerate the use of technology to help companies downsize, and real estate may be among the […]

        Site Selection: What is the mission of the association?         Kevin E. Johnson: We share best practices, we leverage the association’s collateral strength in numbers in working with vendors, and we lobby the government, though we haven’t had to do that as yet. There is value in numbers. […]

New Alliance to Foster Technology-Based Economic Development Communities seeking to implement technology-based economic development strategies will likely benefit from a recently announced alliance between the Milken Institute, a demographics and economic research organization based in Santa Monica, Calif., and New Economy Strategies (www.regional-strategies.com), an economic development consulting firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. The two organizations […]

 S everal years ago, the Council for Urban Economic Development (CUED) and the American Economic Development Council (AEDC) convened a joint task force to address an issue of their membership. The two associations merged earlier this year to form the International Economic Development Council (IEDC).         At issue was the concern of […]

 S pearheaded by the meteoric rise of the Charlotte and the Research Triangle metro areas, North Carolina has climbed to the top spot of Site Selection‘s 2001 Business Climate Ranking.         Becoming the No. 1 state for doing business wasn’t easy. The Tar Heel State barely edged out last year’s winner — […]

 E conomic slowdown and uncertainty is increasing pressure on companies to improve margins. Within Europe, one response of multinational corporations has been to initiate cost reduction through consolidation/rationalization /relocation projects of both manufacturing and service activities.         Government financial incentives are available for these projects (as well as typical new/greenfield investments) and […]

Ontario, Alberta Prove Most Appealing Ontario and Alberta were ranked as the top two investment climates in Canada by U.S. and Canadian investment managers, according to the 2000 Survey of Senior Investment Managers, released by the Fraser Institute, a Canada-based economic research organization. The two provinces tied with a score of 7.7 out of 10. […]

 W hen Japanese automaker Toyota needed to increase its share of the European marketplace in the late 1990s, it went in search of the automaker’s Holy Grail — the perfect site for a new manufacturing plant. After heated competition, the Nord-Pas de Calais region in Northern France offered the most tempting of sites.     […]

 N ot too long ago, state legislatures around the U.S. spent their lawmaking sessions deciding which programs to create or increase appropriations to in order to lure businesses, among other agendas. Lofty economic times filled state budget coffers from Hartford to Honolulu, giving lawmakers lots of leeway in reducing corporate tax rates and aiding new […]

 A s if their plates weren’t full enough already, economic conditions are mandating that corporate real estate managers figure out how to do more with less. More what? They must now demonstrate more of an ability to contain, if not reduce, costs where property assets are concerned, because shareholders and real estate investors are less […]

 C ommercial real estate taxes are nothing to sneeze at. In a medium-sized city like Pittsburgh, taxes on a commercial office building in the central business district can easily run between US$2.50 and $3 per square foot, or about $4 million a year on a 1.5-million-sq.-ft. (139,300-sq.-m.) building in the heart of the city. Taxes […]

 E xactly one year ago, the future looked bleak for Ford Motor Company’s European operations. Bleeding red ink by the buckets, plagued by under-utilized plant capacity and struggling to maintain market share, Ford Europe was more than stuck in reverse. It was careening out of control. At Dagenham in the United Kingdom, Ford Europe is […]

 “I ‘m very optimistic about the economy and about what’s happening here in Mexico,” says Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. The software giant announced in August that it plans to invest US$60 million to train 20,000 Mexican software developers. The company will team up with 3,000 computer and technology professors to help Mexico develop a software […]

Ron Starner  C orporate real estate executives who think they have nothing to learn from the boom-and-bust era of New Economy companies should think again. “The real estate legacy of the dot-com era will outlive many of the start-ups that have now collapsed,” says Jacques N. Gordon, international director of LaSalle Investment Management Inc. in […]

Abstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s pre-eminent corporate real estate association. “Strategies for Managing Through the Economic Downturn,” Pacific Northwest World Congress, May 14, 2001: Remaining competitive in the global marketplace requires a company to hire and keep the best workers, says Jacques Gordon of LaSalle Investment Management. […]

 D ALLAS – If the financial securities industry is any indication, traditional brokerage models are in for a rude awakening. The success of online trading services for institutional and individual investors should not be lost on brokers in other industries, including the commercial real estate industry, where brokers are facing inevitable change in how they […]

 B elfast is struggling to regain its footing as one of Europe’s most inexpensive locations for foreign companies as the U.S. economic slowdown dampens Yankee investor enthusiasm Europewide. After a boom year 2000, uptake of new office space in Belfast fell in the first half of this year to an estimated 185,000 sq. ft. (17,187 […]

Site Selection Managing Editor Mark Arend recently met with Canada’s new consul general in Atlanta, Astrid Pregel, who takes charge of her nation’s economic interests in an increasingly important U.S. region to Canada. The southeastern United States is in the geographic center of what may soon be a free trade zone covering all of the […]

 W hen SYKES, a world leader of customer care management (CRM) solutions, decided to locate a call center in Sveg, Sweden, the decision was based on the fact that SYKES could service all of Scandinavia from this low-cost, remote location. SYKES typically locates facilities in remote areas. Helping Sveg land the facility was a young, […]

Connectivity Drives a New Strategic Alliance Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) has signed a unique strategic alliance with American Fiber Systems (AFS), Rochester, N.Y., a leading provider of dark-fiber-optic communications networks — fiber-optic cable without electronics equipment attached. The alliance calls for Cushman & Wakefield to negotiate arrangements that allow for the interconnection of AFS’s dark […]

 D ALLAS — Visitors to the Adam’s Mark Hotel in mid-June couldn’t be faulted for wondering if a new baby boom was under way in the commercial real estate industry. Most of the speakers at the Realcomm conference held here had something to say about the importance of adoption. They were referring, of course, to […]