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“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, […]

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. […]

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, […]

 SEPTEMBER 1999  SITE SELECTION  1998 TOP 10 UTILITY  COMPANIES   • COVER PAGE    •  CINERGY/PSI    •  DETROIT EDISON    •  ENTERGY’S       TEAMWORK       ARKANSAS    •  GEORGIA POWER       COMPANY    •  MEMPHIS LIGHT,       GAS & WATER       DIVISION    •  MIDAMERICAN       ENERGY COMPANY    •  NEBRASKA PUBLIC       POWER DISTRICT    •  OMAHA PUBLIC       POWER DISTRICT    •  PP&L    •  […]

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 […]

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 […]

[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 […]

Merger-contemplating executive No. 1:     “Can anybody stop us?” Merger-contemplating executive No. 2:     “Hmmm . . . NATO?” Citigroup does things big, as boldfaced by that humorous exchange, reported during 1998’s Travelers-Citicorp merger discussions. Just how big is obvious in Tampa. “We have 9,400 employees in Florida, 2,500 in the Tampa area and 2,200 […]

Where do real estate consultants go for their expertise before meeting with corporate real estate professionals to plot strategy? Besides drawing on their own professional credentials, many attend educational meetings of The Counselors of Real Estate, a Chicago-based association of real estate consultants. The group’s Midyear Meeting in Seattle, held April 18-21, was a good […]

Site Selection: Congratulations on your new assignment at Cushman & Wakefield. How do you envision your role and that of the new Advisory Services unit going forward? Arnold C. Thomas: Advisory Services is a function that has been ongoing at several Cushman & Wakefield offices in the U.S. But the firm did not have an […]

From Copenhagen and Stockholm to Oslo to as far out as Helsinki, Nordic markets are bubbling towards a top. After several years of rapid growth in available space, the market tune has changed. As a result, corporate denizens are scrambling to reposition themselves to control occupancy costs, which, for the average firm, make up 20-30 […]

A decade ago, many U.S. site seekers thought Canada an expensive place to do business. As a result, they rarely looked north of the border when expansion plans loomed. True, Canada was a costly place to operate, compared with many stateside locations. In fact, high operating costs helped turn the country into a favorite hunting […]

Much of the US is running out of attractive, properly prepared industrial land. Twenty-five years ago, the issue of site availability for expanding companies was not usually a major concern. When a client needed a fairly conventional property of perhaps a hundred acres, there was usually a range of choices. Virtually every community or region […]

Most owners of diverse real estate holdings would jump at the chance to organize their property tax records and be able to access tax-related information for specific properties easily. And all owners of real estate would want to reduce their property tax burden wherever possible. Users of Property Tax Office (PTO), a software program from […]

From Site Selection magazine, May 1999 Championship Caliber: Site Selection‘s 1998 Top 10 Development Groups b y     T I M     V E N A B L E Hundreds of growing companies played the location game with skill and poise last year, capitalizing on the championship-level services of Site Selection‘s 1998 top development groups. […]

Breakthrough Deals: New Trend-Setting Corporate Locationsb y     T I M     V E N A B L E  Auto plants in Detroit. Financial services offices in New York City. Distribution centers in Chicago. Those cities and facility types go together like bread and butter, the result of decades of business success. But the world […]