TECHNOLOGY TOOLBOX

he Myrtle Beach Regional Economic Development Corp. lists aviation, marine, building materials, information technology and pharmaceuticals among its target industries. As projects in these sectors develop, the organization will be using SiteTech Systems’ OneSource software to help pinpoint potential sites.

   OneSource is a Web-based GIS application containing aerial imagery and environmental, public record, wetland, soil, zoning, topography and comparable sale history for a particular area. SiteTech compiles data from local, state and federal government sources and its own field studies.

   “We use OneSource with virtually every prospect we have,” says Hugh Owens, president of the MBREDC. “It is up to date and very flexible. It can provide aerial data and other data that is difficult to compile. The data is more detailed than you would find from other similar sources.”

   Owens’ organization recently used OneSource to help find a location for a distribution center and meat processing plant for El Sol Mexican Restaurant Supply. El Sol plans to employ 50 when production begins.

   “They were looking at a building in one of our industrial parks,” Owens says, “and we used OneSource data to supplement the data we had in-house.”

   Owens says MBREDC is using the SiteTech product as it develops a new 100-acre (41-hectare) industrial park, and a 400-acre (164-hectare) aviation park planned for the Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, which was closed in 1993 and is currently being redeveloped. OneSource has been a useful tool and will aid in development of these future projects, Owens says.

   “Because the information is so up to date and accurate, and because the software is flexible, it allows you to survey a large area of land very quickly,” Owens says. “It simply cuts down on the time it would take to go out and try to find properties.”

   SiteTech Systems (www.sitetechsystems.com), based in Myrtle Beach, provides GIS Web software to segments of the real estate industry that include developers, real estate agencies, lenders and economic development agencies.

   “OneSource can answer questions on property value, location or zoning for a prospect pretty much from one source,” says John Jobson, a principal of SiteTech Systems. “There’s not another tool we know of that can compile as much knowledge of market trends.”

   OneSource is currently available in three regions: Horry-Georgetown in South Carolina and New Hanover, Wake and Durham counties in North Carolina. Jobson says SiteTech’s three-year business plan is to enter nine major markets in the Southeast, ranging from Maryland to Miami and west to Atlanta.

   Eric Schmidt, SiteTech’s director of GIS, says one of OneSource’s most useful functions is its “comparable” feature, which can be used to examine an array of properties side by side.

   “For example, we have 317,000 property records in the Raleigh area,” Schmidt says. “You can keep narrowing your search down to a property in Cary with a price range of $1 million to $1.5 million. You can specify that you want vacant land and you want it zoned a certain way. It then pops out a list of 15 properties. We have a very robust layer system that answers specific questions about a property.”

   OneSource is available through an annual license subscription. SiteTech adds new functions to its product each quarter, aimed at making its capabilities more robust. The company prices OneSource based on the level of subscribed service and by markets, which are customized. It offers discount pricing for multiple subscribers within one company. Additional services are available on an a la carte basis.

   “Taking the labor out of real estate research is what we are about,” Schmidt says. “Your county GIS sites are free, but your time is not free. You can spend a lot of time hunting and pecking within a county site. With OneSource research, if you have a subscription to both Wake and Durham counties, you can move within one system.”