Helping Corporate Executives and Business Owners Find Great Locations for Their Company’s Future

“There is no such thing as a perfect community, an ideal city, or a matchless region. But there are optimal locations that meet your current and future needs. Identifying them requires an organized, unbiased approach.”
– Joseph Vranich.

A site selection project that identifies potential locations for expanding, relcating, or consolidating facilities is an infrequent event that requires skills not usually found among internal staff. That is true for projects involving headquarters, manufacturing plants, distribution facilities, research and development centers, and back offices. As a corporate executive or business owner you have a company to run. You can free your time by relying on an impartial expert to help in ways that meet your requirements. Here, in general, is how the process works regardless of the industry you are in:

The Three Phases of a Location Project

Phase I: Initial Assessment, Outreach & Data Collection

We will work with you to understand the nature of the business and your motivation for a location project. After discussing a “broad-brush” list of candidate communities, we will contact Economic Development officials through Requests for Information to identify potentially favorable locations. Specifics will be sought about facility or land availability, taxes and fees, regulations, workforce, logistics, utility rates, and economic incentives among other considerations. Sometimes the political leanings of the area come into play. We will seek facts about quality-of-life factors important to employees such as the cost of living, cost of housing, personal tax rates, and crime. After we provide a detailed report, together we will evaluate the data, decide which communities are excluded as candidates, and identify those that deserve semi-finalist status.

Phase II: Semi-Finalist Communities

Semi-finalist communities deserve a closer look to avoid unpleasant surprises. Questions to Economic Development agencies will include addressing new concerns that have arisen during the process – and usually there are new concerns. Additional data will serve to further narrow the field of candidates, and communities with favorable business climates will earn finalist status.

Phase III: Finalist Locations / Due Diligence

Typically, three communities are finalists where requests are issued to appropriate agencies seeking specific assistance or incentives. We arrange field trips for you to gain first-hand impressions by speaking with development officials, local business leaders, and workforce specialists. Visits can be quite eye-opening. Your tour may include buildings offered for lease, land available for sale, and visits to residential neighborhoods with a real estate agent as your guide. If your company qualifies for economic incentives, negotiations become more formalized. Whatever your final decision, you can find satisfaction knowing that the community you selected is based on an extensive amount of credible information, direct observations, and intense evaluations.

Confidentiality

In making inquiries we keep your identity confidential. That allows us to proceed without inquiries becoming public knowledge that can alarm employees and disrupt operations. It also permits you to avoid sales pitches from target communities and reduce the risk of premature reactions from the news media, labor union leaders, political activists, or public officials.

What Sets Us Apart

Prior to all the above work, an option is to first rely on Joe to provide services as a Coach to reduce worries and become comfortable about launching the formal site selection project. See the Coaching vs. Consulting page. We are unbiased, working without any conflict of interest. Joe does not represent economic development agencies or real estate owners, only companies. All searches are undertaken without preference toward any state, county, municipality, site, or facility.