One of the reasons the March issue of Site Selection is among the most highly anticipated of the year every year is it’s the first opportunity to collate projects from the previous calendar year that qualified for the Conway Projects Database … As the issue arrives at the same time as IAMC’s annual report, project data from IAMC Corporate Active member companies show that they were engaged in 486 facility investment projects around the world involving at least $62.8 billion invested and at least 72,848 new jobs.

Read more in Site Selection Magazine’s digital edition.

There’s good news and bad news to be had in the subject of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). First, the bad news. The commercial real estate industry still has a long way to go. The good news is that years of progress have all-but vanquished the Good Old Boys Network.

“We’ve made great strides,” says Marcus Rose, senior real estate manager for NFI in Camden, NJ. “We can see efforts across all the disciplines, as well as in leadership. Of course, there’s always room for improvement.”

Indeed. But real estate isn’t alone.

Here’s a little irony for you: Coworking, which has been a tenant’s option in the office market for about four decades now, has gained serious post-pandemic steam as office tenants continue to reevaluate (and often cut back) their office requirements. And yet, coworking in the industrial sector is gaining steam specifically for the opposite reason: There’s too much space demand.

Now for some disclosure. The industrial coworking (or co-warehousing or shared space) market is embryonic. As such, growth statistics are hard to come by. In fact, a good handful of IAMC members contacted for this article hadn’t heard of the trend, and if they had, they hadn’t seen it in local action. 

Who speaks for the corporate tenant when a new distribution center is planned for a local community? The short answer is: Everyone, from the economic development corporation (EDC) and the community leaders to the corporation itself. 

But this collaboration assumes that there’s been adequate homework by the appointed site selectors and service providers to ensure–as much as possible–that the local community is indeed the right fit for the project at hand. 

“We have to accept what we’re dealing with and do the best we can.” Thus, Dmitry Dukhan wraps up the essential truth of the current inflationary economic environment. The Medline Industries VP of Real Estate, Facilities and Security takes a sort of laissez faire approach to the issue, categorizing it as “one of those geopolitical issues I have no control over.”