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From Site Selection magazine, November 2003 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION Top Business Park Locations Infrastructure, transportation access make industrial parks prime sites for expanding companies. Hal Johnson knows a thing or two about business park development. As the chief economic developer for Orangeburg, S.C., Johnson has literally put his community on the map by making corporate […]

T he opening of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Food Processing Technology Research Facility in 2004 may well trigger a boost in high-tech investment in the metro Atlanta area. Obvious beneficiaries of the US$9.4 million center are commercial food processors that adopt systems developed by the Food Processing Technology Division of the Georgia Tech Research […]

F orward-thinking companies in the IT, software and telecommunications sectors know that clustering – locating in (or being closely connected to) geographic hotbeds of innovation with concentrations of other similar and related companies, skilled knowledge workers, universities and technology centers and advanced physical infrastructure – is a key way to gain competitive advantage. The regions […]

A bout the time this issue of Site Selection reaches you, I will be finalizing remarks I have been asked to share at a Midwestern state’s annual legislators’ conference. “Competition” is the meeting’s theme, and my role will be to put that state’s relative competitive performance in the context of other states’ and to introduce […]

B oeing’s site search for its 1,500-worker, US$900-million 7E7 assembly plant has hit the home stretch, with Washington positioned as perhaps the place to beat.         As scheduled, Boeing on June 20 shut down submissions for 30-page proposals for the groundbreaking 7E7 Dreamliner plant, which touched off one of recent memory’s most […]

From Site Selection magazine, September 2003 WORLD REPORTS Edited by JOHN W. McCURRY Toyota Taps Thai, Aussie R&D Sites Ever-expanding Toyota Motor Corp. plans a Thailand-Australia research and development base to serve growing markets in Asia and Oceania. Both will begin operations in late 2004.         The Thailand facility will be in […]

  Dear Colleagues: Jack BrophyIAMC Chair It’s hard to believe that is has been more than a year since we launched the Industrial Asset Management Council (IAMC) with less than 20 paid members in an uncertain economy.         We have succeeded above and beyond our most optimistic projections and are on track […]

entral to any region’s success as an economic center is its transportation and logistics infrastructure. This used to mean having rail, highway, air and sea access – even two or three of these could support key industries. But some areas are seeking to distance themselves from competitive locations and are re-evaluating the definition of transportation […]

here is a new wave striking at the shores of company distribution and transport networks. It’s called optimization, and its permutations range from consolidated and re-purposed warehouses to entire economic zones that one logistics expert calls by such terms as “technopolis” and, yes, even “multifunctionopolis.”         Those terms were coined by Franco […]

W hen Siemens Medical Solutions needed a corporate headquarters last year for its American sales and services divisions, PECO Energy provided the location data the company sought.         The result? Siemens moved its U.S. medical headquarters to Great Valley Corporate Center in Malvern, Pa., in Chester County, bringing 3,000 jobs and US$75 […]

M edtronic first came to the Netherlands 34 years ago when the Minneapolis-based medical device company was looking for a European base. The company grew steadily there and recently opened its largest distribution center in Heerlen, in the province of Limburg.         The Netherlands, selected by the Economist Intelligence Unit in March […]

T he global business scene is full of paradoxes. Here’s one: The market’s getting bigger, and the world is getting smaller. In the semiconductor industry, this yin-yang trend plays out in its own fashion. First, the wafers are getting bigger while the chips that come from them are getting smaller. Second, the plants that make […]

S ite Selection: Your recent comments on the need to re-evaluate certain incentives programs and the impact of state-vs.-state bidding wars over projects indicate that you would favor a change in public policy toward recruitment of large companies. Can you elaborate?         Gov. Sonny Perdue: We want to earn the business, not […]

S uppose you sold and leased back your office building 15 years ago and put the cash into your business. Say you received $10 million for a 50,000-sq.-ft. (4,645-sq.-m.) facility. Since you carried out the sale-leaseback in 1988, at the beginning of the economy’s descent into the 1990 recession, you might have offset a loss […]

D alian, China; Tallinn, Estonia; Porto Alegre, Brazil. If these far-flung cities are not on your location radar screen right now, they may soon be. They are among 24 potential city winners identified in a recently released research report, Rising Urban Stars — Uncovering Future Winners from Jones Lang LaSalle and LaSalle Investment Management. The […]

“W e at Pfizer are here today with some good medicine: a shot in the arm for one of the greatest cities in the world,” Pfizer President and Chief Executive Officer Henry McKinnell said in May at a podium inside the drug-maker’s New York City headquarters.         McKinnell and Pfizer did indeed […]

Toyoda Gosei Ramps Up Czech Facility Toyoda Gosei recently began full production at its new facility in the Chomutov region of the Czech Republic. The plant represents an investment of about US$45 million and will eventually employ 700. Toyoda Gosei of Japan, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of airbags and steering wheels, has begun full-time production […]

  Dear Fellow Professional: IAMC has just completed its first year of existence and we already have more members than our most ambitious and optimistic founders thought possible in this time frame.         Moreover, we already have two incredibly successful Professional Forums under our belt and have our third Forum ready to […]

S ite Selection: Describe the scope of your responsibilities as Masco’s Director of Property Management. David Hirsch: It means I’m responsible for 44,075,436 square feet [4.1 million sq. m.] of buildings in the world. That’s 32,935,061 square feet [3.06 million sq. m.] domestic and 11,140,375 square feet [1.03 million sq. m.] non-U.S. That’s 149 manufacturing […]

S ignificant growth in Masco Corp.‘s Delta Faucet division has prompted the expansion or initiation of several projects in the past 18 months. But few have been as influenced by Mother Nature as the construction of a new, 200,000-sq.-ft. (18,600-sq.-m.) central distribution center in Jackson, Tenn. Ground broke in July 2002 at a site adjacent […]

W hen is the last time you quantified your company’s entire real estate portfolio and its performance? If you haven’t done that in the past 12 months, then more than likely you are throwing money away.         That was the conclusion of Ronald P. Zappile, one of 15 presenters at a recent […]

T he effectiveness of state enterprise zone programs, which offer tax abatements and other incentives for businesses to expand or move to economically blighted areas, remains a source of debate more than 20 years after states began creating them.         Some state programs – like the Empire Zone program in New York, […]

I t’s less than a year before 10 new countries join the European Union, as the accession votes succeed like so many dominoes falling in a line. But they are not the only places active in attracting corporations: heretofore undervalued E.U. nations and the group of nations slated to arrive next are all making a […]

T he struggling economy battered the industrial real estate market over the past year and created opportunities for companies working to re-configure their supply chains. Many companies are taking advantage of these opportunities in the hopes of stealing a march on their competitors once the economy regains its balance.         Despite a […]