Where the money went, who moved, and why places win.
Welcome to Issue No. 3.
This week our lead comes from a guest. Brian Curry founded the New Jersey Naval & Maritime Alliance, and he wrote us a field guide for any community that thinks a piece of America's shipbuilding push could land there. It starts with the question most places skip: what, exactly, do you want to build?
SECTOR INTELLIGENCE · SHIPBUILDING
Where America can build more ships
Washington wants more ships. Curry says the location decision starts with what the facility needs to produce. A large oceangoing vessel, an autonomous craft, a structural module and an electrical system need very different sites, and a region should know which part it can deliver before it compares itself to Mobile or Philadelphia.
He lays out three ways to add capacity. Expand an established yard, as Hanwha plans with a $5 billion program at Philly Shipyard, backed by 10 tanker orders from its own shipping affiliate. Build new, as Saronic is doing at Port Alpha in Brownsville, Texas, a yard the port valued at $3.2 billion on an initial 835 acres. Or spread the work across a network, the way HII now pulls structural units from partners in 11 states into its yards in Newport News and Pascagoula.
That third path is the opening for places without a shipyard. "A building with welding equipment becomes useful capacity when it can produce what the customer will accept," Curry writes. His site checklist goes well past acreage and channel depth to land control, environmental cleanup, power service dates, the full water route to the property and whether the welders and inspectors will be there by the hiring date. "A deep navigation channel does not establish usable access at the property."
Curry works on maritime development along the Delaware River corridor, and his disclosure says so up front. It's the most practical guide to this sector we've seen.
BEHIND THE DEAL
The land across the street from Tinker
KIHOMAC didn't run a site search for its $25 million Oklahoma City expansion. It wanted the ground around the building it already runs outside a gate at Tinker Air Force Base, where the base is moving its fence line out and Air Force engineers will be able to walk over and put their hands on parts. The company and the state talked for about two years, and the land was always the holdup. The Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and the Oklahoma Industries Authority took on assembling the parcels, one of them with a creek running through it.
The new building, about 130,000 square feet, is expected to bring well over 100 jobs, with construction targeted for 2027 and an opening in 2028. Incentives haven't been settled. "They're going to do this one way or the other," said Leshia Pearson, who directs Oklahoma's aerospace team.
WHY HERE? · IOWA
Signed, with the site and the money still open
Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the MEGA rewrite Oct. 2, hours after the Senate passed it 28-19, clearing the way for about $1.36 billion in tax credits for Mesabi Metallics' $15 billion steel mill. None of it has been awarded yet. The Iowa Economic Development Authority still has to approve a deal, the company still hasn't said where in Lee County it will build, and CEO Joe Broking has said Mesabi is still lining up financing for its share. Early voting in the 1st Congressional District, one of the closest House races in the country, starts Oct. 14.
CONTESTED GROUND
Putting a number on the neighbors
Jeremy Solomon's company, Learnewable, scores every county in the country each month on how receptive it is to energy and data center projects. Data centers still draw favorable sentiment in two-thirds of counties, but only 42 of 3,144 rated favorable once local rules were counted, and the share with regulatory restrictions rose to 31% from 26% in July. Counties that already host data centers also tend to be cooler on adding another. For a place trying to build a cluster, the second project may be easier to land than the fifth.
MOVERS, SHAKERS & AWARD WINNERS
Who moved
Mitch Frazier · Started Oct. 5 as president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, succeeding Josh Richardson.
Emily Knight · Boston Mayor Michelle Wu named the president and CEO of The Engine, the MIT-founded tough-tech organization, as the city's chief of economic opportunity and inclusion. She starts Oct. 19.
Jennifer Lindley · Now running economic development for Gilbert, Ariz., one of the fastest-growing towns in the Phoenix area.
Awards: The Borderplex Alliance gave Schneider Electric its Woody L. Hunt Excellence in Economic Development Award for manufacturing and workforce investment around El Paso, and Appleton International Airport's terminal expansion won a Wisconsin Economic Development Association award.
Open seat: CyrusOne is hiring a director of site acquisition and location strategy, estimated at $162K–$202K by NextGen Energy Jobs. Wichita, Bowie, Md., Clayton, N.C., and Athens, Texas, are all hiring economic development directors, too.
SECOND SHIFT
Training your own
Aaron Maneenoi spent more than a decade cleaning and fueling buses for King County Metro. He's now in Metro's in-house mechanic apprenticeship at $49 an hour, up from $32. More than 460 people applied in the program's last cycle, and Metro hired nine, The Seattle Times reports.
Terence Davis had never heard of a glazier before he joined a pre-apprenticeship program in Champaign, Ill. He was working within days of graduating and had his union card soon after, The News-Gazette reports.
Both stories come from employers and programs building their own bench, because the skilled workers aren't walking in the door anymore.
RESEARCH, FAST
Less new space, and it's getting taken
Cleveland is building to order. Its industrial construction pipeline nearly doubled to 1.8 million square feet in the third quarter, Cushman & Wakefield reports, and every building delivered was a build-to-suit, led by a 650,000-square-foot Cleveland Clinic operations center. Vacancy is just 4.0%.
Demand caught up nationally. U.S. net absorption hit 59 million square feet in the second quarter, outrunning new supply for the first time since 2022, Colliers reports. Completions fell to their lowest level since 2016.
Chicago's big boxes keep leasing. Vacancy fell to 4.5%, JLL reports, and speculative starts reached 2.0 million square feet, the most since late 2024. Where developers trust demand, they're building without a tenant again.
THE 30-SECOND VERSION
Three ways to add shipbuilding capacity, and one doesn't need a shipyard · Two years to assemble a few acres next to Tinker · $1.36B in Iowa credits and still no site · 42 of 3,144 counties rate favorable for data centers · 460 applicants, nine apprentices at King County Metro · 1.8M sq ft under construction in Cleveland, mostly built to order
That's the whole issue. You're caught up.
COMING NEXT
Across the Table: site selector Taylor Stepp on the risk nobody was measuring three years ago. Sector Intelligence: Matt Landek on who will run the new data centers. And Iowa, whenever the IEDA board takes up the steel mill.
One last thing
Brian is the first guest contributor to lead an issue, and I hope he won't be the last. If you work in this business and have a field guide in you, I'd like to read it. Same address for the project we missed, the move you're too modest to announce and anything we got wrong: [email protected].
Andy Greiner
Location Decision