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June 16, 2022
Houston port begins $1 billion ship channel expansion
Port Houston officially kicked off the $1 billion expansion of the Houston Ship Channel earlier this month.
Described by the port as a “generation-defining project,” these improvements to the nation’s busiest waterway – more safely and efficiently handling import and export containerships and other vessels – is expected to deliver jobs and growth to the Houston region, state, and nation.
I think the biggest news this year to hit the Triangle is a Vietnamese automaker opening a $4 billion plant with hopes of 7500 new employees in Chatham County. A largely rural county, it’s quickly getting encroached on by Chapel Hill, Cary, and Apex growing into it.
Bad: Losing Citadel is a huge blow, as it will affect revenue, talent, ancillary businesses, morale/reputation, etc. Say what you will for his personality and politics, but for decades Griffin dumped a lot of money throughout the city: non-profits/the lakefront funding will take a big hit in addition to the business community.
Good: Google potentially expanding to the Thompson Center
The city's tech jobs underachieve compared to the Valley, Austin, Boston, Denver, New York, the Research Triangle, etc, and this would be a huge leap forward. My understanding is Google West Loop would not close, so this would be a significant introduction of good jobs, breathing life into an oddly grimey part of the loop.
Montreal International, a non-profit PPP organization that promotes the city and helps attract FDI helped manage close to 60 FDI projects in the first half of 2022, total $1.74B investments. It does not include Moderna, which will open their first plant outside the U.S in Montreal. This number only counts projects the organization helped attract, so the amount is definitely higher than announced.
However, it is slowing down due to global factors and even though they claim Bill 96 won't hamper our growth, it's actually causing the tech and gaming sector to slow down hiring, with a lot of transfers happening to Vancouver and Toronto.
Office vacancy rates downtown are finally decreasing, with downtown hitting 13.3% vacancy, which is very high for Canadian cities. Before covid, it was hitting 7%, with some parts of downtown hitting nearly 6% vacancy. Currently, almost 2 million sq ft is U/C and will come onto the market in 2023.
Memphis:
New hotel (Hyatt something) being built downtown. Lots of new apartment buildings being put up in South bluff (or really have been over the last 5 years or so). Big continued growth in Downtown, Collierville, and Desoto County.
NOLA:
Haven't seen too much revamp except helping hospital systems post (semi post?) covid.
I think the biggest news this year to hit the Triangle is a Vietnamese automaker opening a $4 billion plant with hopes of 7500 new employees in Chatham County. A largely rural county, it’s quickly getting encroached on by Chapel Hill, Cary, and Apex growing into it.
Pennsylvania is cutting its corporate net income tax rate incrementally over the next eight years. It's currently 9.99%, the second-highest rate in the U.S. behind only New Jersey. Next year, it will be 8.99%, still the fifth-highest, but it will decrease by 0.5% each year for eight years after that, ultimately ending up at 4.99% in 2031, which would be the ninth-lowest rate in the U.S.
Two other tax reforms in Pennsylvania help tremendously for small businesses, by making deductibles for machinery and other equipment immediate in the year of purchase, instead of incremental and based on depreciation, and increasing the deductible for general business investment from $25,000, the lowest amount in the U.S., to $1,000,000, the maximum amount allowed by federal law.
These two reforms should make Pennsylvania significantly more competitive in the future for corporate expansion and relocation, and small business climate too.
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