Business executives and consultants who specialize in helping companies choose just the right spot for a location have a national database at their fingertips.
Called REDI Sites, Readiness Evaluation for Development and Investment, it is provided by the Site Selectors Guild (SSG), an organization created to provide businesses with an experienced location strategy professional.
Georgia and South Carolina have programs that highlight properties that are prime spots for new or expanding businesses. In South Carolina, they are called Palmetto Site, administered by the South Carolina Department of Commerce.
According to the website, Palmetto Sites has collected and verified information that has been reviewed and evaluated in the following areas:
- Property Ownership and Control: Confirmation of price, availability of sales/lease, and marketability.
- Site Characteristics: Documentation of buildable acreage, zoning, topography, and transportation infrastructure.
- Utility Status: Documentation of location and available capacity of water, wastewater, electric, natural gas, and telecommunications.
- Due Diligence Reporting: Completion of environmental, wetlands, geotechnical, endangered species, and historical finding studies.
In Georgia, it is the Georgia Ready for Accelerated Development, or GRAD, sites, offered by the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
“We have a special section on our website for the GRAD certified site. So, it’s the Georgia Ready for Accelerated Development sites.” Bob Kosek, Division Director of Global Commerce, who oversees project management teams, told ABD. “Once a site is GRAD certified, they can apply for maybe up to $2 million for things like infrastructure or clearing and grading or road improvements.”
The difference between the state programs and REDI Sites is that the latter is a nationwide standard.
“As a site selector, I understand that if you are a GRAD site, you have been through some type of process that is looking at the due diligence, but I don’t really know how to compare that to a site I might be looking at in South Carolina or North Carolina or Alabama or Ohio.” Didi Caldwell, President and CEO of Global Location Strategies (GLS), and past chair of SSG, told ABD. “So, what the REDI Sites does is that it is an additional designation that site selectors and the industry overall will be able to understand.”
Site Selector Magazine’s July issue has an article written by Caldwell highlighting the REDI Sites, including one in Orangeburg County. It is the Central SC Alliance’s Tri-County Global Industrial Site on St. Matthews Road in Orangeburg.
“This has been my passion project since 2018, and what we modeled this scoring on was LEED certification from the Green Building Council,” Didi Caldwell, President and CEO of Global Location Strategies (GLS), and past chair of SSG, told ABD. “If I tell anybody that’s in real estate, construction, corporate, etc., that is a LEED silver building, they have a really good understanding of what LEED silver means. This is a similar type of thing. If I tell you that my site is ready, sites gold. Anybody that’s in real estate project development should have a good understanding of what that means.”
Caldwell said having a REDI Site can be particularly advantageous for locations in rural areas like Orangeburg.
“We’re not looking at what’s the size of your population? What your workforce looks like. This is all specifically about the site and the surrounding infrastructure,” she explained. “Even if you’re a rural community, you can have a really stellar ready site. Maybe nobody ever thought about whether I should go and look in Orangeburg for a place for my manufacturing facility? But they look at this, and there’s a really good site there in Orangeburg. So, it gives them an opportunity to compete where otherwise they may not get that opportunity.”
Caldwell said there has been an increase in development activity as the pandemic ended. The availability of sound investment, ready sites has dwindled in larger population areas. That is forcing companies to look at more rural areas for growth potential.
The REDI Sites guidelines assess locations for both industrial and office projects. Currently, there are no REDI Sites in Georgia; however, Caldwell said one is under review.
More information about REDI Sites is available at https://siteselectorsguild.com/.
Details about the industrial site in Orangeburg are at
www.centralsc.org/properties/tri-county-global-industrial-site
