Landing industries, businesses not easy

By CHRIS TRAINOR/ ctrainor@indexjournal.com
Tuesday, February 24, 2009 11:33 PM EST

As is custom in the economic development world, new industries and other developments being recruited by a given county are often referred to by project code names, keeping the prospective corporations’ actual monikers secret until the time of announcement.

In Greenwood, public-private economic development firm Partnership Alliance has bandied about project names such as Project Chill, Project Phoenix, Project Green and Project Deluxe, among others, in recent years.

Late last week, Partnership executive in charge of operations Mark Warner sat down with The Index-Journal to discuss the steps a project takes in its journey to fruition.

In discussing a hypothetical project that would represent a reasonably substantial industry, Warner said the process simply begins with a lead.

“The lead can come from four buckets, maybe five,” Warner said. “It can come from the Department of Commerce. They get requests for information they disseminate to local developers. It can come from the Upstate Alliance, which is the marketing entity for 10 counties and four or five municipalities in the Upstate. They generate leads.

“Also, our local businesses are a source of leads.Then another bucket would be where we target a geographical area or a segment of an industry, and using a couple of different analytical tools, identify companies that might be susceptible to expansion or relocation.”

After a lead is gathered, Warner said Partnership will receive a request for certain information that might be pertinent to the prospective industry.

“Sometimes they’ll say, "We have a client that is looking for an existing building that has a certain number of square feet or a certain ceiling height,’” Warner said. “Proximity to a rail service or an interstate access might be included. We get requests for information with as little as that, but we’ve gotten some from site consultants that have been 50 pages long. It can be extremely sophisticated.”

Warner said requests for information often want to know what the area’s current major employers are, what the size and make-up of local school systems are, and what the higher education situation is.

“You talk about site selection consultants, but it’s really site de-selection,” Warner said. “You’d be surprised. Some little thing might eliminate you from being one of 200 sites to not making the next round.” More here.