Fighting for Country and West Michigan Business: Brent Case in The Right Place

In this episode, we chat with Brent Case, VP of Business Development at The Right Place. Brent takes us through his career journey, from his military service and education at Central Michigan University to his pivotal role in economic development in Grand Rapids. We explore the strategies behind business retention and attraction, the importance of workforce development, and the major projects shaping the future of the region. Tune in for an enlightening discussion on how Grand Rapids is growing and evolving to become a hub of opportunity and innovation.

5 Key Takeaways:
1. The Role of Economic Development: Economic development is not just about attracting new businesses but also retaining and expanding existing ones. The Right Place focuses on understanding local business challenges and connecting them with resources to help them grow in Grand Rapids.

2. Importance of Workforce Development: One of the primary factors for attracting and retaining businesses is the availability of a skilled workforce. Grand Rapids boasts a young and educated talent pool, with 95,000 people enrolled in local universities and community colleges.

3. Diverse Industrial Base: Grand Rapids' economy benefits from a diverse industrial base, including manufacturing, health innovations, medical devices, and furniture industries. This diversity helps the region weather economic downturns better than areas reliant on a single industry.

4. Success Stories: Examples like SnackCraft, a Greek company that chose to expand in Grand Rapids due to the available workforce and lower cost of doing business, highlight the successful outcomes of effective economic development strategies.

5. Future Challenges: Despite successes, challenges remain, such as the availability of industrial properties with the necessary infrastructure. Addressing these challenges is crucial for continuing the region's growth and attracting new businesses.

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: THE PALMER GROUP real estate team.  The Palmer Group is an energetic team within 616 REALTY led by Eldon Palmer with over 20 years of experience helping people navigate the home buying and selling process in West Michigan. To support the channel and all of our guests, contact Eldon@ThePalmer.Group, drop a COMMENT, SHARE, LIKE or SUBSCRIBE to this podcast. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Our primary activity is meeting with the companies that are here, understanding what their challenges are, what the trends are, and help plug them into resources so that they can continue to grow in Grand Rapids and not leave our market.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Hey, welcome back. Today we have Brent Case, who is VP of Business Development, at the Right Place. And you know, Brent and I have a little something in common we grew up in the same small town area so big town. So why don't we just tell us a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 1: 0:34

Sure Well, first of all, thanks for having me on Eldon. I really appreciate it. Honored to be here today. I am the vice president for business development at the Right Place, been at the Right Place for about five years now. I'm coming from Chicago but going back to Remus, grew up there, went to high school, graduated, joined the Army, did some money for college. Sure, didn't realize that I'd get the bonus package and get to go to war.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Yeah, yeah. What time was that? What time period? It was the first Gulf War. A bonus package and get to go to war yeah, yeah, what time was that?

Speaker 1: 1:05

what time period it was, um, the first golf war. So back in 1990, august of 1990, landed in saudi arabia at the ripe age of 20, week after my 20th birthday. So got to go through that war and come home. Great experience for a young man, um, I would say definitely the foundation for everything that followed. Got out of the Army, I went to Central Michigan University right afterward and got a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management and Manufacturing. So Central Michigan was home for a long time, stayed around there as long as I could and then ventured off into the world of manufacturing for a long time. Stayed around there as long as I could and then ventured off into the world of manufacturing for a few years, okay, and then eventually, um, I answered an ad in the newspaper to become a business development manager in economic development at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. What is that?

Speaker 2: 2:03

I didn't even know, I didn't even know.

Speaker 1: 2:04

I didn't even know, but it was that long ago that I actually answered an ad in the newspaper. These kids wouldn't even know what that is Exactly. So I started at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in 2000 and left manufacturing. Having manufacturing as an education and five years experience was really good for this role. But I didn't miss manufacturing and ever since I've been in various roles in economic development, from new ventures to international trade, global logistics and then most recently I say for the last decade been working in business attraction bring new investment into the region.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Do you mind going a little bit deeper in what some of those individual things were? So there's a little bit of context for people.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Yeah, because economic development Pretty broad term.

Speaker 1: 2:55

It is a very broad term and really it's, you know, people working in the background to improve our economy right, Mostly at the local level. It's all local. We work at a regional scale here at the right place, but with new ventures. That was working with business incubators. So CMU Research Corporation up in Mount Pleasant launched an incubator that I was part of getting started and we were focused mostly on nanotechnologies and leveraging the research that was going on at the university with professors and graduate students, but also some scientists from Dow had some novel technologies dendritic nanotechnologies and so that was New Ventures.

Speaker 2: 3:42

And this is early 2000s, mid-2000s.

Speaker 1: 3:44

Yeah, early 2000s. I started at CMU Research Corporation in 2003. And so then I was there for four years and had an opportunity to start another incubator over in Midland, the Mid-Michigan Innovation Center, which is a little more broad. It wasn't as scientific. The mid michigan innovation center, which is a little more broad, it wasn't as scientific, but really it was helping entrepreneurs put a business plan together. We actually created a virtual incubator where companies could be part of the organization out of their garage, okay, so they didn't have to move in, but they could leverage. You know, know, learn how to market, learn how to raise money, getting that first customer, hiring people, et cetera. And so I did that for a few years. And then I shifted gears and went to Lansing and worked in international trade. So I was a vice president for international trade, working with one leg at the airport in their foreign trade zone and the other at the Chamber of Commerce.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Okay, how does that connect?

Speaker 1: 4:51

Right. So New Ventures was completely different, because you're working with companies who have very few resources and the winds are few and far between. You know, we did have some successes. Advanced Battery Concepts might be a company that people in mid michigan remember they're still around but they were our very first virtual tenant that started in their garage, okay, and now they make, uh, these green technology batteries. You know way better than um lead acid batteries that most of us think of, and obviously battery technology is a hot topic nowadays. Oh for sure, so it was. You know a long road for them to get to where they are now, where they're making and selling product and a very successful company, but those wins are one in 50.

Speaker 1: 5:38

Yeah, so I made a conscious decision to get out of new ventures and go into international trade where you're working with companies that have resources. If they're importing and exporting, they have the funds to do that because it's not an inexpensive, you know venture Right need to have people that know how to do that, because it's a lot of you know technical skills to import and export a lot of administration, a lot of paperwork, but it also costs a lot of money to ship products you know into the United States and bring products or ship products out of the United States and bring products into the United States. So we would help companies identify international customers, so travel over on trade missions, which was great, and I really started working abroad I went to China a few times, brazil, europe regularly but helping companies make those connections but also gain the technical knowledge so that they could import and export without penalty or, you know, getting their product caught up somewhere.

Speaker 2: 6:55

The technical, not from logistics, from taxes or regulations.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Yep Tariffs, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 7:02

So was that more exporting, more importing, or was it kind of like a balance?

Speaker 1: 7:07

It's focused mostly on the exports.

Speaker 2: 7:09

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:09

Think of our Vandelay Vandelay Industries, but yeah, so it was mostly exporting. However, I did get a little more involved in imports with our foreign trade zone, so I helped set up a foreign trade zone in Lansing, and real quick. A foreign trade zone is just a designated area by the federal government that allows companies to import products, not pay duties on it right away, okay Until they ship them out of that area. So if you re-export it you'll never have to pay the duty. So it helps with cash flow.

Speaker 2: 7:55

It can reduce the duties. It only works for a few companies and the goal is probably to import things that maybe are in high demand here, that we can't or hard to get, that really help American or local companies grow.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Exactly, and the program is 75 years old now. When they started it, it was to encourage the value add to happen here in america if you had to import those components that would go into that.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Yeah, um, it helped american companies stay competitive and that's still the the primary function of the foreign trade zone nice. So that's when I got more involved in global logistics and importing. And then, um, I went over to chicago for a few years, got headhunted to go there and do business attraction, for it's called intersect illinois, okay, which is similar to the michigan economic development corporation here in Michigan, but it's the state of Illinois' attraction agency. So my boss, the CEO of Intersect Illinois, reported to the governor of Illinois at the time and our role was to market Illinois outside of the state to bring in new investment, clearly on business or tourism or a little bit of everything Pure business.

Speaker 2: 9:02

Yep, just business. Investment we on business or tourism, or a little bit of?

Speaker 1: 9:04

everything. Pure business, yep, just business, investment. We didn't get involved in tourism, but that organization was young and we were really building it, as we building the plane, as we flew along, and so we'd go to international trade shows. Later this month I'll be in Washington DC at it's called Select USA, where international companies come in that are interested in investing somewhere in North America. They get a speed date with the different states, so every state is represented at Select USA, most of them.

Speaker 1: 9:39

It's like a trade show. There's booths, but then there's a networking area where they have tables with numbers on it and you set appointments up ahead of time and then meet with these companies. So we, we designed and built the Illinois booth and brought our utility partners, the state of Illinois Department of Commerce people, along, really promoted Illinois um and business attraction is fun in that sense that you, you get to work with international companies. There's, you know, cultural and language barriers, but it's fun to navigate that um and they're all excited to invest in the US and usually it's you, you know, opening their first North American operation.

Speaker 2: 10:26

Okay.

Speaker 1: 10:27

So to hold their hands for that entire process, help them connect with resources, secure incentives. So that was in Illinois. I did that for a little over two years and then I had a death in the family and needed to come back to Michigan, be closer to my sons, and I could have come back to anywhere in Michigan. I was talking to people in Lansing, to people in Detroit, but I really wanted to be in Grand Rapids. So, having worked at the right place back in 02 for a short while before going to CMU um research corporation, um, I wanted to come back to the right place and the organization had changed so much in the city of Grand Rapids, had changed so much in almost 18 years since I had worked there before. But I contacted the CEO who had hired me the first time and less than a week later I was sitting down here in Grand Rapids working out a deal for me to move back and work at the right place. So that was nearly five years ago.

Speaker 2: 11:42

Yeah, coming home.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Yep came home really excited to be back. Um, the organization's grown significantly since I was here in o2. It used to be about a dozen people, 15 I think, when I was there in o2, and now we're up to 40 people wow, so that's a lot of growth, yeah it's a lot of growth and you know, you live here in the region, you can see, you know how it's changed over the years.

Speaker 1: 12:10

And I mean, grand rapids is the fastest growing city in the midwest and, uh, one of the youngest cities and that you didn't used to be.

Speaker 2: 12:19

When we got out of college. I remember, you know, even for a time period there it was, people were just leaving. They'd graduate from college here in Michigan and they'd head out west, head out east, head down south. They would just not stay in Michigan. There wasn't all that much here for them. So it's.

Speaker 1: 12:34

I've definitely seen a change in that, for sure, yep, I think you know part of the reasons I wanted to be in Grand Rapids is the diversity of Having worked in manufacturing. I actually did my internship in Detroit working for an automotive parts company and you know the east side is heavily reliant on the auto industry. So when the auto industry goes down, you know Detroit suffers, michigan suffers, but Grand Rapids, because of the diversity in our manufacturing base, we don't usually feel that pinch as hard. We have automotive suppliers here but we have a great health innovations, medical device industry. Obviously the furniture industries will put grand rapids on the map. Um, so it's just great to be part of this growing economy. Um, the exciting things with the amphitheater and the soccer stadium coming downtown. Some of my colleagues are directly involved in those projects. I'm not as much, mostly focused on the industrial side.

Speaker 2: 13:39

Yeah, well, all that stuff makes it a great place to live and then therefore, a great place to work.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Yeah, Raise a family.

Speaker 2: 13:46

Yeah, yeah, raise a family. Yeah, you gotta. You know, I imagine it grows to a pool of them.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Available employees um, definitely a higher caliber of employees, all of these things, yeah, um, workforce is definitely the, the number one thing that companies are looking for. Um, not only the availability of a smart workforce, but looking for a younger workforce. Um, and our average age I might have just said it was 32 years old, okay, but that's, you know, compared to other areas, that's really young, yeah, and we have about 95 000 people enrolled in the dozen universities and community colleges that we have in the area, so 95 000 is a nice talent pool to draw from when companies are coming here.

Speaker 2: 14:33

Yeah for sure, yep. So let's kind of rewind a little bit. Sure, can you get into a little bit more for a lot of people that don't really know what the right place does, a little bit more in details? You've kind of covered with, you know, similar to MEDC in the Illinois, but maybe we can get a little deeper.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Sure. So MEDC and Intersect Illinois are state agencies, so they work with their local and regional partners to do economic development, but at a state level. So the right place is a regional economic development group. We actually cover eight counties. I won't list them all, but Kent County is a primary county and when the Right Place started back in 1985, it was to help Kent County.

Speaker 1: 15:18

And over the years Berget added more counties to the Right Place and since Randy Thalen came on three years ago we've added a couple more, so now serving an eight-county region which is almost from north to south, 125 miles and east to west about 125 miles, so covers a lot of geographic territory and a lot of diversity in the communities that are in the service area that we cover, that are in the service area that we cover, so, which is great for companies that we're approaching and trying to bring into the region. Some of them want to be in an urban environment, some prefer a suburban area, not right in the urban core, and then others, you know, are looking for that small town, to be a company in that town. So there's so many options what does that look like?

Speaker 2: 16:12

from a like, a day-to-day, like you're reaching out to companies or companies reach out to you because pretty well known in the area and probably who to talk to. Sure sure.

Speaker 1: 16:21

so for the attraction side, we find people in different ways or companies in different ways. It might be through I mentioned SelectUSA. There's what's called a site consultant community. So there's people out there that make a living where all they do is work with companies to make location decisions. If you think of an international company, they don't usually know that they would want to be in Grand Rapids Michigan. Sure, most international companies have never heard of Grand Rapids Michigan. I think Detroit is the capital of Michigan.

Speaker 2: 16:56

Right yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:57

And so these site consultants will present communities to the companies. It might be you know 10 of them to start to say you know for what you you need. You should look at these communities and here's what each of their strengths are. So we work with those site consultants. A lot of it comes from our existing industrial base, so a company might have a supplier that they're talking to. They want them to be closer. So if they're located in the southeast or out west and they would like them to be closer or at least expand, we don't usually steal companies to come here. That's a kind of a misconception that people have about economic development. We're not stealing companies. They're usually expanding into a new market. So our local companies will provide those leads. And then our partners at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation also bring opportunities to us.

Speaker 1: 18:13

Different markets atlanta, dallas, um, new york, to meet with site consultants and companies that are considering expanding in michigan. So I go there with my counterparts from across the state and give the pitch of why they should consider grand rapids. So, um, but that's just actually a very small part of what the right Place does is business attraction. I like to say that it's about 10% to 15% of our overall activity. Our primary activity is meeting with the companies that are here, understanding what their challenges are, what the trends are, and help plug them into resources so that they can continue to grow in Grand rapids and not leave our market right. So you hear every now and again about companies closing down and laying off, and our whole mission is to try to avoid all that and and help them expand, help them stay ahead of the curve in technologies to remain competitive. We provide training on creating an environment, a work environment where they can retain their employees, help their employees upskill. So it's pretty diverse on what we're doing. So we, in addition to doing what we call business retention, we have a talent team at the right place, where that's their primary goal is to bring in new talent. So to recruit them, get those boomerangs coming back from chicago or wherever they might have left, get them to come back. That's called hello west michigan, okay, um, we have a diversity, equity and an inclusion arm in the right place trying to help those employers.

Speaker 1: 19:55

There's some big ones out there that employ thousands of people that have a very diverse workforce. How do you manage that and make it a place where people want to work, you know, for many years and reduce the turnover rate. We have that team. We have the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center as part of the Right Place. So this program has been around for a couple decades, but the primary function there is to help manufacturers stay plugged into. It used to be lean, now it's industry 4.0, it's artificial intelligence for manufacturing. How to integrate these technologies. One to manage the short, um, shortfall of talent that's available, right um, manufacturing isn't necessarily what people want to do for a career, and so, because they have a difficult time getting people to work for them, how do they automate? How do they make the people that are working there, how do they make their job easier while giving them better skills? Not just putting a widget together, but how do you program that robot to put that widget together?

Speaker 2: 21:13

Right Upskill them. So I've had you know, friends in manufacturing still. So I came out of manufacturing and that's definitely a problem between staff and they've completely. I went and visited their shop and so much more automation there. Yeah, you know they can't get people, for whatever reason, right consistently.

Speaker 1: 21:34

They've really replaced them with automation and automation used to be a dirty word in economic development because it was all about jobs. But it's not necessarily all about jobs, of course, at the right place we're our three pillars our people place and prosperity. People come first. We're doing this all for people. But when you have, you know, a reduction in workforce, you got to work smarter, and so we now encourage companies to automate and connect them with the resources to do that. Last week, I was at a printing company yeah, you know a little bit about that and um.

Speaker 1: 22:13

This printing company is leveraging technology, not only for printing, um, but for cutting the prints, adhering them to you know some substrate, sure, and uh, they've invested about two million dollars to use robots to do this. Yeah, and I went. I, coming from manufacturing, I don't think of printing as manufacturing, yeah, but what they do is as much manufacturing as you know other places, and so it was really encouraging to see, right here in our backyard, this company that's probably, you know, leading the nation and no pun intended but cutting edge technology right um to to use robots and automation for the for printing and actually moving into um new market areas that they hadn't been in before yeah, yeah, might have been.

Speaker 2: 23:07

When we talk about the same place.

Speaker 1: 23:08

We might be.

Speaker 2: 23:10

Then, yeah, and one of those guys has my old job, you know, he took it and ran with it. So, yeah, that was super interesting to me because he kind of and even to remain competitive, you kind of have to adopt all these new technologies.

Speaker 1: 23:27

So, to just go back to the right place, our primary function is to help the companies that are here to grow and overcome challenges and plug into resources, but we also assist with talent attraction, training and then manufacturing, consulting to assist with automation and industry 4.0.

Speaker 2: 23:48

So how do companies get involved with the right place on that level?

Speaker 1: 23:52

Sure, well, we have multiple industry councils that we manage. So we have a manufacturer's council and we're going to be announcing an AI roadmap for manufacturers that's coming out of that. We have a supply chain management council, so not just manufacturers, manufacturers, but a lot of people that are involved in logistics. Yeah, we have a technology council that is made up of. You know, technology crosses all sectors, but this is a little more vertical software, cyber, you know, ai type companies, as we try to grow our tech company presence in Greater Grand Rapids. And then the last one is a medical device consortium called my Device. So we have the medical mile in Grand Rapids that has grown significantly over the last 20 years and we have quite a few medical device companies and some big medical device manufacturers here and we continue to recruit them. So this consortium is made up of those types of companies and you know talking about their challenges and best practice.

Speaker 2: 25:07

So how is this paid for? Is this publicly funded? Is this a cost to the manufacturers or the businesses that get involved? How does that work?

Speaker 1: 25:16

Yeah, so I was mentioning those councils because that's one great way for companies to get plugged into any of those industry sectors. But the right place is a private, not-for-profit, non-governmental agency which is, I would say, somewhat unique compared to other economic development organizations. A lot of them are funded by the local municipality that they serve. So, um, but we have 265 investors in the right place. A lot of them are big corporations. It was the, the family names that made big or, excuse me, made grand rapids, what it is today. That started the right place back in 1985. Yeah, um, and they continue to support the right places. Cause, um, individual donors, and then I would say about 15 to 20 percent of our revenue comes from contracts with municipalities, counties. We might get grants from the states to provide economic development services. Sure, so it's a mix, but it's not. We're not on the government dole.

Speaker 1: 26:29

So that's great yeah, and what's great about that is flexibility. Flexibility, and today I had a call earlier with a company in Germanyany. It's thinking about opening its first operation here in north america, and for me to explain to them that I can provide all these services identify sites, identify, you know, workforce availability, training, dollars, incentives at no cost to them, they're like what's the catch?

Speaker 1: 26:59

right, you know, and I'm like, well, our investors cover the costs so that you don't have to, and that really it provides us a lot of flexibility, um, but allows us to demonstrate our commitment to these companies. So I usually travel to europe to visit with companies, um once a, usually in October, and I was able to tell them today, you know I'd be glad to come and see your facility, which will help me have a better understanding of what you want to build in our region, and that means the world to them that you're willing to make that investment to go see them. You have that commitment to spend your time to get their note, to know their company yeah, it's great, like man, having that, you know, for as much virtual as we do.

Speaker 2: 27:46

Even having that handshake, eye to eye, looking at their stuff, investing time in them yeah, it certainly makes sense and and I invited them to come visit.

Speaker 1: 27:55

they're already planning a trip to the United States in July and in September and we're working it out that you know either time that they have availability to come to Grand Rapids.

Speaker 2: 28:09

Nice yeah. So is that pretty common, where you're bouncing back and forth, or is this kind of a big, big fish fish, if you will? I don't know what better way to put it.

Speaker 1: 28:19

I would say that's standard practice for us. Yep, without a doubt. Um we recently announced the?

Speaker 1: 28:25

um relocation of a headquarters I I said earlier that that doesn't happen very often yeah but we did have a hand in relocating a us headquarters from charlotte, north carolina okay, um, to downtown grand rapids, and that's a german company that berget, our former ceo, helped bring to the greater grand rapids over 20 years ago. Um, they're located out in sparta. It's called tesa tape. Oh, yeah, and um, we my colleague and I, were visiting their global headquarters in Hamburg, germany, and thanking them for a recent expansion. That they did, and we assisted with it. But we wanted to let them know that we appreciate that they continue to grow in Sparta and if there's anything we can do to let us know, it's like well, I'm glad that you're here, because we feel that maybe we should put our headquarters in downtown Grand Rapids so that we can attract the talent that we want and be closer to our manufacturing.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:28

And so that was a couple of years ago and in that time we worked with the state for them to get incentives, we worked for them to get training dollars. State for them to get incentives, we worked for them to get training dollars. And it was just a couple months ago that they announced the relocation. They've already the only one person moved up from north carolina okay, and all the rest are new hires, and so they've already added 60 new positions, wow, and they're they're looking to add about 15 more. So you know it's it's standard practice for us to visit our international companies that are already here, thank them for their investments here and see what more we can do. It doesn't always lead to a relocation in the in a headquarters.

Speaker 1: 30:13

but you don't know unless you ask and um you know, economic development is a long, long game, so it's about long-term relationships.

Speaker 2: 30:23

Yeah, the relationships, like every sales or support or customer service. You just have different services, different customers. It's certainly important. It sounds like that's one of the main, like you said, main core values there, definitely yeah said main core values there, definitely yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:45

So, um, I was. I was going to talk a little bit about some of our recent success successes. I mentioned taste and tape. Um, we we're now not necessarily a recent success, but our pipeline is full of opportunities with companies that are looking to invest in our region. You hear different things about, you know, the economy being soft and if we're on the verge of a recession. But, quite frankly, greater Grand Rapids and I think it's, for some of the things that I talked about, you know, one of the fastest growing regions in the Midwest, young people we're not seeing any slowdown. In fact, this month is halfway through the year and for our metrics, we've almost hit our year-end goals already.

Speaker 1: 31:33

Man that's great, yeah, so unfortunately I don't get to take the rest of the year off. Yeah, so unfortunately I don't get to take the rest of the year off. Um, but uh, the, the, the pipeline has, you know, a couple projects that we're about to announce. That'll be really exciting.

Speaker 1: 31:48

Um, some really close to us yeah, I'm looking forward to that, yeah yeah, um, some, some of the companies that have been here for decades, you know, expanding, continuing to grow, consolidating, which is great for our region. Um, and then new opportunities for investment. The hot sectors are definitely data centers. Okay, with the increasing demand for AI, you know, there's these tech companies really need to invest in data centers, and so the state is working on some legislation that will be an incentive for them to do that here. Okay, like, frankly, it's 30 other states that already have these incentives. Yeah, it's nothing novel, but Michigan has competitive energy prices as well, so there's could be some data center opportunities coming up around the corner. And then food and beverage manufacturing is a hot sector as well.

Speaker 1: 32:54

Yeah, we brought in a company from Greece called snack craft. In Greece it's called Unismack, okay, interesting. They make healthy food snacks, okay, and they, you know, basically penetrated the entire European market. The only place for them to grow was here in the US. Sure and plus, the European economy is soft and energy prices are high. It didn't really make sense for them to expand there. Makes sense. Snack Craft, located out in Kentwood, down on 52nd Street and Broadmoor, and they took over the old Cary Foods facility. They committed to creating 185 jobs, invested nearly 50 million dollars, and they make healthy food snacks and they sell it under different brand names sure here in the us.

Speaker 1: 33:49

not even a year after they are here, they asked if we could assist them with an expansion. Wow, they more than doubled their footprint, added another 165,000 square feet so they can add a couple more production lines and have warehousing there and committed to adding 50 more jobs. That's awesome. So food and beverage is big here in West Michigan.

Speaker 2: 34:10

What was their? You know what are their primary reasons for that. For choosing here I mean healthy. We have the have the, you know, fruit industry and some other agriculture well, number one is workforce.

Speaker 1: 34:21

Okay, because there are so many food production companies here. You know they can. If they have the right culture, have the right pay levels and benefits. They can bring people in from existing food manufacturers that makes sense the talent and workforce availability was number one. Um, really, though they were looking at chicago and new jersey, and so just on pricing, or and the price of land taxes, right, you know, the cost of doing business here in grand rapids is much lower than both of both Chicago and New Jersey for sure.

Speaker 2: 35:00

Yeah, cost of living, cost of work, for all of that stuff, yeah, and then our ace in the hole was their CEO.

Speaker 1: 35:07

So he had left Aestheta Foods and was doing some consulting and they reached out to him to help them, you know, find the right location for SnackCraft. And I say they, it's the Greek owners of the company, but also a private equity firm out of the UK.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Okay.

Speaker 1: 35:28

So they got with. His name is Joe Riley and he's like you know, you can put it in Chicago, you can put it in New Jersey, but it'd be a lot smarter to put it here in grand rapids.

Speaker 1: 35:41

so we basically gave um joe all the supporting data um on the cost, on the workforce, the availability of, you know, raw materials yeah um, we, we here in west michigan, we have access to, you know, fruits, vegetables, flour, wheat grain, all the all the stuff that you need, right? So just proximity to the supply chain was important too. But yeah, joe, joe was our ace in the hole.

Speaker 2: 36:11

Great Having that relationship, you know. Again, china shows those relationships paying off.

Speaker 1: 36:15

Yeah, definitely. Joe had worked with the right place at his previous employer so he knew to call us.

Speaker 2: 36:20

Nice, yeah, good deal. Yep, anything else trending or that's interesting coming up?

Speaker 1: 36:27

I think some other trends are a challenge for us. I talked about all the great exciting things, but the things that are. A challenge for us is availability of industrial property. Yeah, so there's. There's a very low um vacancy rate. Um for industrial property that's served with utilities, so that the sewer and water are already there. There's capacity with the sewer system. Um, you know, power to the site. Data centers is a great example.

Speaker 1: 37:02

They need a lot of power but major tracks of land. So in West Michigan, unfortunately, there's only a handful of those, and so now we're out there identifying, you know, properties that might make good industrial sites five years down the road.

Speaker 2: 37:21

Sure.

Speaker 1: 37:22

And start to develop the infrastructure now, because we have to have a pipeline of industrial property.

Speaker 2: 37:28

Right.

Speaker 1: 37:29

If we want to keep the region growing and bringing in new companies.

Speaker 2: 37:32

Yeah, makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1: 37:33

So that's the, I would say probably one of the biggest challenges for us is just available and facilities. You know, if the facilities on the market, chances are it's going to get snatched up really quickly.

Speaker 2: 37:45

Yeah, I didn't think about you know. You think that there's so many different infrastructure things depending upon the business, whether it's power, water cooling, whatever kind of product they're making.

Speaker 1: 37:55

Yep. So those are a couple trends, you know, and challenges that we're facing.

Speaker 2: 38:01

Yeah, so anything else you want to cover here before we wrap?

Speaker 1: 38:07

Not that I can really think of.

Speaker 2: 38:09

We talked a little bit beforehand. I was trying to think if there's anything else. I think we covered a lot, like I learned a lot that I didn't know before. So I didn't realize you had such a focus on retention.

Speaker 1: 38:21

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:22

And you know working with businesses, I've always thought of the right place more as an attractant Sure.

Speaker 1: 38:28

But it's really does Sexy headlines. Yeah, is bringing the new companies in, but you know, if we've done the analysis and 85% of our projects are expansion projects here, right here in the region, that's awesome yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:42

Well, how can people reach you guys?

Speaker 1: 38:44

Um, pretty simply, if you want to get involved with the right place, you can reach out to me. Um, and find me right at rightplaceorg. Click on the staff page and find Brent Case Awesome yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:58

Appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me, ellen. Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for watching. See you guys. They tell me that I'm never gonna make it. They want me to do something that can make sense. They hate when I