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Ontario Power Generation — North America?s biggest electric utility in generating capacity — is an invaluable member of the economic development team that?s helping make Ontario a leader in the chase for new business. In fact, OPG (the electricity generation successor to the former Ontario Hydro) recently won the Economic Developers Council of Ontario?s inaugural […]

One of the late 20th century?s most significant business trends, infrastructure integration is an idea whose time has come — and with it, a new role for real estate. Case in point: CIGNA corporate real estate?s (CRE) innovative Vision 3 Initiative, which merited a prestigious Best Practices Award from the International Development Research Council (IDRC), […]

If only the Y2K bug could be gotten rid of as easily as its counterparts in the natural world. It cannot, of course, and there is a palpable sense of foreboding surrounding the run-up to Jan. 1, 2000, when non-Y2K-compliant computers will assume it?s 1900. There is an even stronger sense in some circles that […]

Those looking for immediate insights into real estate-related risk exposure tied to the Y2K bug can find extensive coverage of the topic at www.y2krealestate.com, a Web site operated by Millennium Strategies Group, LLC, a Denver, Colo.-based consultancy. The site lists building operating systems at risk and provides links to numerous articles detailing the various technical […]

In the coming years, one of the most important service providers to the corporate real estate profession will be a modem-equipped computer. Traditional service providers of all stripes are automating their services where possible in order to reduce their own overhead and to quench clients? thirst for convenient, customizable access to services. As corporate infrastructure […]

“If you?re in a pretty strong telecom market position, you?re in a difficult situation,” says Kevin O?Hara, the intensely alert, 38-year-old COO of red-hot Level 3 Communications (www.level3.com). O?Hara?s words may seem to fly in the face of conventional business wisdom. Like Elvis, however, conventional wisdom has left the building. The telecom business, O?Hara explains, […]

In the “Information Age,” telecommunications is as much a part of a community?s backbone as is its highways, railways and waterways. Now, businesses study not only an area?s physical and human infrastructure when locating a facility, but its telecom capabilities as well. And as telecommunications activities increase in the fast-paced global economy, the need for […]

Call it “physiostructure.” We might as well, since “infostructure” is now an established part of the site selection lexicon. In fact, much of this SS issue is a veritable hymn to how information infrastructure has dramatically altered where, when and how we work, transforming a 9-to-5 workplace that was as tightly defined as the facility […]

Common business wisdom used to hold that if you built a better mousetrap, the world would beat a path to your doorstep. But that was before people started shopping over the Internet and expecting almost instantaneous delivery of the products they ordered. Today, a growing number of customers demand exceptional logistics service from their vendors. […]

Aha, Michael Jordan, so it wasn?t the shoes after all, eh? It was the work space. Or maybe it was the work space at Converse, where basketball master Jordan originally assumed he?d sign for his 1984-85 pro rookie season. Then, however, he visited Converse?s offices and decided ?they just looked traditional.? So the fiercely innovative […]

If there?s one sure thing that you can say about utility deregulation, it?s that it?s complicated. Some states are deregulated, some aren?t, and some are in the process of deregulating. New services and products are coming online regularly, and new terms in the energy-shopping arena are popping up everyday — so many things to learn, […]

Introduction: Origins of this PaperIn April 1993, the International Development Research Council?s journal, Industrial Development, published an article entitled “A Vision of the New Workplace.” (Industrial Development ran in Site Selection magazine for several years.) The authors were Francis Duffy from London-based DEGW, an architect who has spent most of his career studying and acting […]

In March 1999, distribution facilities giant ProLogis, an Aurora, Colo.-based real estate investment trust (REIT), acquired Meridian Industrial Trust, another leading manager and developer of distribution facilities, resulting in a global powerhouse with a market capitalization in excess of US$6.7 billion. ProLogis, with more than 168 million square feet (15.6 million sq. m.) under development […]

A look at recent major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent association of corporate real estate professionals. “Interactive Member Survey and Awards Luncheon,” IDRC San Antonio Fall World Congress for Corporate Real Estate Executives, Nov. 2, 1998: This interactive survey provides likely the most persuasive evidence of the growing importance […]

IDRC, the world’s leading professional association for corporate real estate executives, is going electronic with its membership services offerings. “Members on the Web” will include a number of new interactive features through IDRCNet, the group’s World Wide Web site in response to the growth of event registrations and other services on line. “Visits on IDRCNet […]

Relocation: What’s Your Currency Conversion? How far will your employees’ current salaries go in a new location? Homefair’s Web site (www2.homefair.com) provides online assistance in that important currency conversion. We randomly picked 10 U.S. cities and calculated how far a US$100,000 salary in relatively low-cost Peoria, Ill., would go in each. And $100,000 of Peoria […]

Awards range from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the Nobel Prize to a Hair Club for Men’s vice presidency. A major yardstick for any award, though, is who wins it. Clearly, that standard elevates the Krafsur Award. The award’s consistently high quality was again evident at the New England World Congress of the International […]

C annes, France: Integration of a new and different sort is advancing on the new Europe: Like their U.S. corporate counterparts, European companies are feeling the pressure to maximize the synergies of their corporate infrastructure resources (CIR). Responding to the accelerated pace of workplace change generated by rapidly evolving technology, European firms are looking for […]

[Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from a speech by Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard in New York City on April 15.] I am very pleased to be back in New York City. On my last visit, three years ago, I had just become Premier of Quebec, and I spoke about our goal of turning around […]

At its best, corporate real estate is like Atlas, the mythical Greek god who bore the heavens: Top-flight real estate shoulders strategy. Appropriately, Lucent Technologies’ workplace strategy is dubbed “Project Atlas.” Led by Lucent’s real estate group, Project Atlas is a dramatic, five-year workplace transformation now under way for 24,000 key R&D employees located in […]

If a corporate real estate executive (CRE) can get a due diligence professional to alleviate the countless headaches associated with environmental, architectural and engineering aspects of major transactions, then it may cost him, but he’s ahead of the pack. More importantly, expansion strategies stay on track and the CRE can stay focused on the other […]

One way to virtually ensure superior service from companies charged with solving business problems — service providers — is to stress your shop’s high-growth company characteristics. (That’s not a stretch for most high-tech and telecom companies.) Why? Because service providers are bending over backwards to retain the business of such players in the hope they’re […]

”The rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “are not like you and me.” Similarly, Fitzgerald might’ve added, fast-growth firms are not like you and me — or most of our businesses. Very few of us can claim status as one of today’s fabled “gazelle” firms, who’ve become something like the business world’s Furbies. Everyone wants to […]

In the beginning, Paychex was about not getting paid, providing an object lesson in fast-growth small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) cash-starved travails. Today, the Rochester, N.Y.-based payroll services provider is a US$500-million-a-year business with 100 facilities. But for five long years in the 1970s, Paychex was a $0-a-year business with zero facilities. “I started with […]