Recent News

Crestone Development, a division of Crestone Companies, has announced that they are making a major investment in downtown Watertown.  Crestone has purchased five downtown properties, book-ending on the East and West ends of Kemp Avenue.  Crestone Owner, Eric Skott says the plans are to work to preserve the character of downtown whil...Continue Reading

Stop trying to save Rural America. Efforts to write it off as “disappearing” are complicated by the 60 million Americans who call a rural community home. We must recognize that innovation, diversity of ideas and people, and new concepts don’t need to be imported to rural communities – they’re already there. Rura...Continue Reading

CJ Foods USA Inc., a U.S.-based affiliate of South Korean-based global lifestyle company CJ CheilJedang, plans to build a new 700,000–square-foot Asian food production facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The new facility, planned for Foundation Park, will result in more than 600 new full-time jobs by 2025 and include automated state-of-the-ar...Continue Reading

Seven years ago the Chamber kicked workforce and education initiatives into high gear, establishing INTERN South Bend Region as a program to encourage internship development and provide social and professional development opportunities for summer interns. This was quickly followed by leading the collaborative development of South Bend RegionManufacturing Day (MF...Continue Reading

If you are anything like me, reading or writing the word “COVID” causes mental fatigue that seems to be exacerbated by the day. The entire world (but for the sake of this blog we’ll focus on the distribution center and logistics industry), is feverishly assessing how this pandemic is affectin...Continue Reading

While the site selection industry is constantly evolving, no one anticipated the changes that COVID-19 would bring in 2020. COVID-19 has impacted what types of projects are in the marketplace and how executives, consultants and economic developers are adapting the site selection process. This article will explore some of thes...Continue Reading

As we roll into the next decade, it is evident that exponential growth in technology and economic conditions will be key drivers in the changes over the next decade that will impact workforce, real estate and logistics, among other things. These changes will have a dramatic impact on site selectio...Continue Reading

Top 10 Economic Development Predictions for 2021 1. Awareness and appreciation for the ED profession grows. There is nothing better than unprecedented economic disruptions to bring the value of economic development to the forefront. This is similar to the aftermath of the Great Recession with one major exception: back then, we wer...Continue Reading

Our attitudes about food and beverage influence the brands we purchase, how we socialize, where we shop — and sometimes even where we live. Our expectations are high when it comes to product mix and availability. When our wants and needs are not met quickly, as was the case a...Continue Reading

As if manufacturers are not challenged enough by COVID-19, many face shortages of appropriately skilled workers to keep their tech-savvy factories competitive. A 2018 report by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Instituteestimated the manufacturing industry would have as many as 2.4 million jobs to fill by 2028. Last year, the National Association o...Continue Reading

AD: How has COVID-19 changed the employee experience in manufacturing, and what facets of this should organizations retain going forward? Zenk: Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, employees have been experiencing a drastically different work environment. Thousands of manufacturers across the U.S. and around the world were deemed essential during the pandemic...Continue Reading

Authors don’t write books for librarians, they write books for readers. So why are economic developers creating websites just for search engines? The sole focus on search engine rankings has moved economic development website marketing away from the true intended purpose - connecting communities to business owners and expanding economic growt...Continue Reading

There's no shortage of articles that will opine about how tumultuous 2020 was for the economy, jobs, and industry as the world grappled with the impact of COVID-19 on business and daily life. However, there's reason to be optimistic, especially in manufacturing.   Despite 60% of manufacturers feeling the impact of COVID on operations, ...Continue Reading

PwC’s Aerospace & Defense practice has issued the seventh edition of its Aerospace Manufacturing Attractiveness Rankings. It does so at “a precarious moment in the industry’s history,” according to the report’s introduction. “By April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had plunged commercial aviation into crisis mode, with global revenue passenger kilometer...Continue Reading

ATLANTA – September 1, 2020 –Governor Brian P. Kemp, in conjunction with the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD),  announced an increase in economic development projects in Georgia and a total of more than $7.4 billion in new investments made in the state during fiscal year 2020. This news follows today’...Continue Reading

ATLANTA, September 14, 2020 —The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s International Trade division is officially announcing a new marketing tool created to provide virtual connections between international buyers and Georgia suppliers. The new Export Georgia, USA Directory provides Georgia businesses with the global connections they need to reach new markets an...Continue Reading

AD: Will more companies be re-shoring or near-shoring as a result of the global pandemic? Jensen: For certain, most companies are closely examining the options available to them to avoid future supply chain interruptions. Part of the challenge of making a decision on a future sourcing direction is that this story isn’t over...Continue Reading

Few implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are as consequential to global manufacturers as disruptions to their supply chains. For many, this is the most consequential by far. Supply chains are always a work in progress as such market variables as transportation costs, tariffs and trade agreements force logistics managers t...Continue Reading

As the coronavirus pandemic disrupted global supply chains, a new report released in April by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) urged the U.S. government to develop a national industrial strategy to strengthen the competitive position of advanced, traded-sector industries that are “too critical to fail.” “Even before this pandemic...Continue Reading

Somewhere between your umpteenth Zoom meeting of the month and the latest webinar on the economic impacts of COVID-19, this thought probably crossed your mind: “How long will I be working from home?” While an exact answer to that question still eludes most companies, the effects of remote working are startin...Continue Reading

The Brookings Institution hosted a webinar on June 10 titled “Mitigating the Economic Impacts of COVID-19 in Rural Areas.” Moderator Tracy Hadden Loh, a Brookings Institution Fellow, engaged three experts on rural economies in looking back at the pandemic’s effect on two small towns and across rural America, and ho...Continue Reading

Beset by the COVID-19 pandemic and its recessionary shocks, companies across the globe are paring workforces at alarming rates. In the United States alone, some 40 million workers had filed jobless claims by the end of May, with the biggest losses occurring in the leisure and hospitality, professional business services...Continue Reading

Women’s entrepreneurship has been dramatically on the rise in America during the past decade. There are now 12.3 million women-owned businesses in in the U.S., according to a report by American Express and SCORE. The average annual revenues of women-owned companies rose 68% in 2019, to $384,359 from $228,578 i...Continue Reading

 As part of the EY organization, we can also serve economic development organizations (EDOs), chambers and state and local governments with global industry insights, funding assistance, tax and incentives evaluations, and continuous support through strategy implementation. We remain as committed as we have always been to making communities more prosperous place...Continue Reading