HARLINGEN — Attracting major new companies bringing new jobs is a goal of any community.
Given the stakes, and the competition for those companies and jobs among cities, it’s no surprise site selection has become an industry in itself.
The ins and outs of site selection and how to maximize a community’s assets will be the subject of an economic development conference at the Hilton Garden Inn on South Padre Island on Thursday and Friday.
“There are 275 site selectors nationally, and they do 60 percent of all the projects in the country,” SiteLink Forum organizer Paige Webster said yesterday. “And I’m bringing in seven of the 275.”
SiteLink brings together regional economic development officials from the Valley area with experts on site selection, logistics, transportation, real estate, labor markets and more, said Matt Ruszczak, executive director of the Rio South Texas Economic Council.
“This is the first time we will be having this kind of site selector event in the RGV as far as I know,” Ruszczak said.
The forum is being sponsored by Ruszczak’s organization, RSTEC, which serves as first point of contact for major companies seeking to relocate or expand in the Rio Grande Valley.
Keynote speaker for the forum is Mike Bowen, president and owner of Am-Mex Products. Bowen is an expert on the maquiladora industry and has overseen operations in Texas, Central America and the Rio Grande Valley border area. He lives in McAllen.
“What I like to tell people is we’re not site selectors, we’re site eliminators,” Webster added.
“If you’re competing with four or five other communities throughout the country, if you get too many checks against you, they’re going to go to the community with fewer checks,” he said.
Other conference speakers are James Blair, managing principal at Navigator Consulting, an international firm offering site-selection services; Jeff Pappas managing director at E Smith Partners, a firm which offers global real estate strategies and labor market analytics; and Tim Feemster, managing principal at Foremost Quality Logistics, which advises on economic development, real estate, logistics and marketing.
Also speaking at the forum are James Beatty, president of NCS International, a site selection and economic development firm; Allea Newbold, a certified public accountant who negotiates credits and incentives for new and expanding companies; Dusty Duistermars, strategic managing director of Newmark, Grubb, Knight and Frank, who specializes in site selection and location strategies; and Webster, president of Webster Global Site Selection.
Registration for the event at the Hilton Garden Inn has closed.
