Elizabethtown, N.C. – July 1, 2015. The Southeastern Partnership (“North Carolina’s Southeast”) has launched a new marketing technology tool that will offer real-time intelligence about the region’s available properties and communities to businesses and site selectors around the globe. The organization’s buildings and sites database, constructed with help from a $35,000 matching grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, went live last week. The searchable site displays information on listed industrial sites and buildings across the region’s 14 counties.
The new tool is accessible to the public via The Southeastern Partnership’s website: www.ncse.org
Online property listings are nothing new. What sets the Southeast’s new tool apart is a detailed set of layers based on GIS mapping and local data providing everything from demographics and railroads to zoning, pricing, lease terms and more. “Accurate, real-time market intelligence is now the standard in site selection,” says Steve Yost, President of The Southeastern Partnership. “Clients and consultants want this information at their fingertips – and this new database gives it to them in one convenient, reliable place.”
The Southeastern Partnership worked for nearly a year with Location One (LOIS) in customizing the tool, which will interface with the N.C. Department of Commerce’s statewide “AccessNC” database. Local economic developers from around the region also contributed to the tool’s design and will play a central role in keeping the database accurate and up-to-date.
“Buildings and sites are obviously very key components to our marketing strategies,” says Russ Rogerson, executive vice president at the Economic Development Alliance of Fayetteville & Cumberland County. The typical location search begins with a survey of existing buildings, says Rogerson, a veteran economic developer with experience in several states and regions. “It’s important to have a site that counties can participate in.”
Today, such web-enabled databases are usually the first – and for some regions the only – stop for site selection consultants,industrial real estate brokers, and businesses engaging in expansion and relocation projects. “Companies and their location advisers operate on compressed time schedules, and they are tech-savvy, mobile and self-sufficient,” explains Joe Melvin, Director of Business Development for The Southeastern Partnership. The process can be unforgiving for communities lacking such information tools. “When consultants research locations on behalf of their clients and can’t find what they need online, there’s a good chance they’ll just move on to another community.” Melvin calls the launch of the new database “a win-win” for both the local economic development organizations in the Southeast and site selection professionals around the globe.
Headquartered in Elizabethtown, N.C., The Southeastern Partnership pursues a mission to “provide strong economic development leadership in southeastern North Carolina through innovative marketing and collaborative regional initiatives that will support the creation of new jobs, generate capital investment, and secure new business locations.” Member counties are Anson, Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, Cumberland, Duplin, Hoke, Montgomery, New Hanover, Pender, Richmond, Robeson, Sampson and Scotland. For additional information, visit www.ncse.org
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