Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

From the March/April 2013 issue

It’s never an easy task to stay up to date in a world where head-spinning change comes at us on a daily basis. Blink your eyes, and this morning’s newspaper is rendered obsolete by the next Twitter message that scoots across your smartphone.

The challenge to be timely and informative is even greater for a monthly magazine. But in this issue, we think we’ve met that challenge, and then some. We did it the old-fashioned way—by getting up close and personal with our most important sources.

Our Global Bio Report is the most comprehensive entry we’ve ever produced for our annual review of the high-tech sector that grows jobs in test tubes. For this year’s Bio cover story, we sent our European correspondent on a wide-ranging expedition on the continent to bring you the most important new developments from across the pond.

Here in the States, we sat down with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and explored how a dynamic success story unfolding down South may crown a new global leader in the automotive and aerospace sectors.

Closer to home (and to our hearts), we’ve produced a detailed look at the $60-billion recovery effort now underway in New Jersey and New York to repair the devastation wrought by Superstorm Sandy.

We hope you agree it was worth the effort. You’re invited to find a comfortable chair and start reading.

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Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

From the January/February 2013 issue

It’s become very stylish to have animals pick the winners of major sporting events. After Germany’s Paul the Octopus wrapped his tentacles around soccer’s World Cup a couple of years ago, all sorts of creatures got into the act. As this is being written, Princess the Camel is vying to make Super Bowl history by snorting at five winners in a row.

Here at Business Facilities we think relying on our four-legged (or eight-legged) friends to make the tough calls is a cop-out. So we make sure our top awards are the result of a comprehensive vetting process involving industry experts and valid metrics.

The quality of the big-ticket projects that went head to head in our 2012 Economic Development Deal of the Year competition forced our blue-ribbon panel of judges to bring their A-game to the scoring. If there’s a common thread running through the winning projects, it’s the transformative potential of each of them.

Our Gold Award winner, Baxter’s $1.3-billion investment in Georgia, moves the Peach State into the front ranks of bio/pharma players; Sasol’s petrochemical complex in Louisiana, our Silver standard-bearer, is a huge bet on the future of gas-to-liquids energy conversion; and Apple’s decision to put its global Ops Center in Austin, our Bronze winner, cement’s the Texas capital’s growing rep as a high-tech hub.

As always, we congratulate the winners and encourage everyone to get a head start on next year’s contest by using our handy online nomination form at www.businessfacilities.com.

Jack Rogers

Editor in Chief
jrogers@groupc.com

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Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

From the September/October 2012 issue

With politicians roaming the nation in search of votes and football titans clashing on the gridiron, everyone seems to be consumed with making their picks this fall.

If you’re as tired as we are of doubletalk from candidates and mixed signals from clueless refs, we encourage you to curl up with our annual Editors’ Location Picks. We’ve taken care to mine the economic development landscape for some sparkling gems that have earned a place in our yearly showcase. As always, it was much harder winnowing the field of worthy locations than it was singing their praises on our pages.

We’re also pleased to give you a front-row seat as we have an in-depth chat with Gov. Steve Beshear of Kentucky about his diverse and effective strategy for growth. With new and expanded production from Ford, Toyota and GM, Kentucky has emerged as an automotive powerhouse. But the Bluegrass State is about much more than fast cars, fast horses and great bourbon. From advanced batteries to a global logistics hub, Kentucky is moving forward and heading for the top tier.

We also encourage you to sample our comprehensive review of emerging high-tech hubs. These technology centers are popping up in unexpected places, quickly moving advances out of the labs and into nearby end-markets.

There’s a lot to digest in this year’s busy fall harvest. Check out this issue and take your pick.

Jack Rogers
Editor in Chief
jrogers@groupc.com

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Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

After the financial collapse and the Great Recession—and throughout the sputtering recovery which has followed—perception has been almost as important as reality.

Everyone is reading the economic tea leaves, hoping to glean some positive sign that tomorrow will be better than today. Stock markets rise and fall on whispers of instability or the smallest glimmer of progress.

In this environment, we know our Rankings Report is viewed through a prism colored by the hopes and fears of all the locations we evaluate. So we’ve taken special care to make sure the nearly 50 categories that comprise our 8th annual rankings exercise are configured to produce credible, informative results.

We also keep our spotlight fixed on the locations that have succeeded, which is why we limit our results to the top 10 states or metros (in some categories, the top five). We assume everyone has better things to do than to argue over who finished 40th or 41st. We hope you agree.

Business Facilities always has considered its primary mission to be your guide to the most suitable locations for your development projects. Our showcase is reserved for those who deserve it—and we’re not going to kick anybody who’s struggling to climb the ladder.

We congratulate all of the top-ranked locations in our 8th Annual Ranking Report. We invite you to visit this link and give them a cheer.

Jack Rogers
Editor in Chief
jrogers@groupc.com

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Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

From the May/June 2012 issue

Sometimes things don’t work out exactly the way you’ve planned them. When we sat down at our editorial calendar meeting last year and set the lineup for the May/June issue, we assumed that our annual look at the biotech sector would reveal a steadily expanding universe of start-ups.

We also thought waves of economic recovery emanating from the U.S. would be coming ashore in Europe. We wondered whether a federal consolidation of government data centers—now impacting more than 1,200 facilities—might turn our industry focus of this sector into a crisis report.

Well, it turns out that the biotech playing field is leveling, Europe is in crisis and the data center industry is growing by gigabytes. Go figure.

Which tells us that it’s more important than ever to stay current on the latest twists and turns of the economic development saga. Yesterday’s winners may be tomorrow’s losers. The only constant is change. We’ll do our best to keep you up to speed.

This month, we also unveil our comprehensive survey of the leading utilities. The survey generated two Regional Powerhouses and six Top Utilities. All of the utilities who earned our new annual designations are plugged into the heart of economic development efforts in their regions.

We invite you to turn the page and see which of these power players are burning the midnight oil and putting a jolt into job creation.

Jack Rogers

Editor in Chief
jrogers@groupc.com

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Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

From the March/April 2012 issue

When we planned this issue, we reserved the cover for a timely feature on the hot-growth digital media sector. We also set aside a healthy number of pages for our new Economic Development Awards.

Well, it turns out we just couldn’t keep an award off the cover—as the issue headed to press, one of the digital media shops profiled in our cover story snagged an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. We congratulate the folks at Shreveport, LA-based Moonbot Studios for their meteoric rise from start-up to stardom.

Moonbot’s Oscar has plenty of company on these pages as we unveil our first annual package of awards honoring the economic development agencies who have consistently established and executed the best practices in our industry.

Every year, Business Facilities bestows its top honors for Economic Development Deal of the Year and State of the Year. We also put our imprimatur on the leading states and metros in our annual Rankings Report, the most comprehensive set of rankings you can find.

Now we turn our spotlight on the organizations whose efforts create the development success stories that fill our magazine every month. The worthy finalists in all of our awards categories made our task of picking the winners a lot harder than we thought it would be, a credit to them all.

And so, without further ado, it’s time to raise the curtain, open the envelopes and start the applause.

Jack Rogers

Editor in Chief
jrogers@groupc.com

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Jack Rogers, Editor in Chief, Business Facilities

From the January/February 2012 issue

We are welcoming in 2012 with a new double-issue format and schedule for Business Facilities. Our magazine now will appear six times each year (including our annual Site Seekers’ Guide, which remains our November/December stalwart).

Fewer issues doesn’t mean less coverage of the critical subjects central to economic development and site selection—to the contrary, the larger format will enable us to deliver our most comprehensive package of insightful features to date. We also will be introducing some new departments that will expand the scope of our coverage, while maintaining the level of expertise you have come to expect from a national publication that has been an industry leader for four decades.

As usual, we open this year’s volume with our annual Economic Development Deal of the Year and State of the Year awards. The field was highly competitive, with nearly two dozen big-ticket projects vying for top honors, and several states worthy of contention for the big prize. Our congratulations go to Utah, our State of the Year standard-bearer, and to the hard-working folks in Kentucky, South Carolina and Arizona who wowed our blue-ribbon panel with an impressive tour de force of innovative project development. In our view, there were no losers in this year’s awards competition.

On these pages, you will find the best of the best—those who aimed to get bigger and better. Bravo to all.

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This month, we take our annual look at the high-growth biotechnology sector. Usually, our biotech bonanza is chock full of good news, a welcome tonic to the uncertain outlook in other industries.

However, this year we must report that the nation’s still-teetering recovery is causing private investors to sit on their cash—even for breakthrough biotechnologies that promise to revolutionize medicine, agriculture and energy.

As seed money dries up, the leadership position of the U.S. in biotech is being threatened. We encourage venture capitalists to open their wallets and do their part to bring tomorrow’s miracle drugs and biofuels out of the labs and into the markets.

We also want to take a moment to give a shout-out to our friends in Tuscaloosa, AL and Joplin, MO, both of which were ravaged recently by mammoth tornadoes. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands of homes were demolished by these terrible storms, which generated winds approaching 200 m.p.h.

Our hearts ache for the victims, but we were cheered by numerous stories detailing incredible heroism in the face of certain death. As reported in this month’s Snapshots sidebar, the residents of these communities already have begun to rebuild, showing courage and resilience that is lifting the spirit of the nation.

We look forward to seeing Tuscaloosa and Joplin get back on their feet and come back bigger and better than ever.

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This month, we cast our view over the horizon and bring back a front-line report on several nations aspiring to lead the competition for foreign direct investment. In a world taking uncertain steps on the path to recovery, the stakes are enormous.

Our 17th Annual Global Issue is chock full of action, from the ongoing life sciences and ICT juggernaut in Berlin to the island-wide entrepreneurial hub that is Barbados. We also paid a visit this year to the emerging economic powerhouse of South America, Brazil, now home to the world’s seventh-largest economy. The Brazilians are fueling their cars with sugar-based ethanol and their fiscal security with 4.5-percent growth.

There was even time for a side trip to Israel. Not surprisingly, Israel gets high points for durability and efficiency from our economic development gurus. This small but potent nation was cited by the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook for having the most resilient banking system during the financial crisis.

Forgive us for a hometown slant, but without a doubt our favorite stop this month was at the 16-acre parcel in lower Manhattan that used to be known as Ground Zero.

As documented in our Snapshots sidebar, the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site is proceeding at a fever pitch. This month’s news from Pakistan gives us hope that the 10th anniversary of 9/11 will mark a joyous rebirth in the heart of New York City as well as a somber remembrance of unspeakable evil.

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This month’s cover story took a lot of digging—nearly 130 million cubic meters of rock and soil, enough to fill the Empire State Building about 130 times.

In 2014, the 5.25-billion expansion of the Panama Canal will be completed in time for the 100th anniversary of the opening of the 48-mile waterway through the Isthmus of Panama. The mammoth project, which began in 2006, includes two new sets of single-lane, three-step locks and deeper, wider shipping lanes. It will double the Canal’s capacity, currently about 280 million tons of cargo carried on 14,000 vessels annually, and give the larger Suez Canal a run for its money.

The new and improved Panama Canal will permit huge post-Panamax cargo vessels to sail directly from Asia to East and Gulf Coast ports instead of offloading on the West Coast and shipping their goods across the United States by road or rail.

U.S. ports are scrambling to deepen their channels and install huge cranes that will enable them to cash in on a bonanza in increased Canal traffic that will be measured in billions of dollars. The potential shipping windfall is so big that traditional competitors, like Savannah, GA and Charleston, SC, appear to have declared a temporary truce and joined forces to attract the lion’s share of new business from the Canal.

We encourage you to punch your ticket and climb on board as we sail through one of the most comprehensive economic development efforts ever undertaken. Somewhere, Teddy Roosevelt is smiling.

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