Area Development Homepage >> Editor's Note >>

Over the years, the publisher and editor of Area Development magazine have worked closely with many site consultants. For 2008, we have decided to “formalize” this relationship and increase the opportunities for information sharing by forming an Editorial Advisory Board of 12 esteemed site consultants. This board will help to further inform us about the needs of corporate executives and economic developers. Below are brief bios of the individuals who have agreed to serve on our premiere Editorial Advisory Board:

Darin Buelow is a Senior Manager with Deloitte Consulting’s Strategy & Operations practice and has over 15 years of experience in providing facility, supply chain, construction, and location solutions to clients. His services and strategies have guided over 100 major corporations with the deployment of people, facility assets, and equipment, representing over $2 billion in combined capital investment.

Buelow’s experience includes global location strategy, supply chain strategy, site selection, labor market analysis, footprint rationalization, distribution network optimization, incentives negotiations, and real estate strategy and implementation. He has provided services for major corporations in the technology, consumer business, manufacturing, aerospace, food, paper, and retail industries, and has directly negotiated over $250 million in incentives and inducements for deployment projects. Buelow’s experience extends to functions across the enterprise, from production and distribution to back office, corporate headquarters, R&D, and shared services operations, and he has experience in locating projects across North America, Mexico, China, and Singapore. His client experience includes H-P, Best Buy, The Gap, Limited Too, Spectrum Brands, Barneys New York, Pratt Industries, Polychem, Raytheon, UPM Raflatac, Barilla, Michelin, Levi’s, Volkswagen, Nestle, Wrigley, Jo-Ann Stores, and Applied Materials.

Darin Buelow has been quoted and/or published in Area Development, Global Logistics and Supply Chain Strategies, Midwest Real Estate News, Chain Store Age, and the Illinois Business Journal on deployment-related topics, and is a frequent speaker on topics ranging from location strategy, incentives, global market issues, and footprint rationalization.

James V. Cahill is a Senior Vice President and Founding Principal of The Staubach Company’s Maryland Office and a leader within the National Life Science Practice.  He is an expert at developing comprehensive real estate strategies in support of his client’s business objectives. A highly experienced real estate professional, Cahill ensures that all necessary resources are available to his clients and that quality service is provided.

Jim Cahill’s varied experience includes complex assignments such as the representation for the headquarters consolidation of Manugistics Group, the acquisition of a Vaccine Pilot Plant on behalf of SAIC, MCI, Computer Sciences Corporation, Suburban Hospital, Wells Fargo, Axcelis Corporation, and Andrews Office Products, Inc. Representation of Advancis Pharmaceuticals, Celera Genomics, IOMAI, Merck, Baxter Healthcare, Tellabs, DynCorp, and other notable companies round out Cahill’s experience.

He has been an active practitioner in the Greater Washington, D.C., commercial real estate community since 1989. Prior to joining The Staubach Company, he was an Associate Vice President with The Donohoe Companies, a full service commercial real estate developer. Jim Cahill started his career in real estate with The Charles E. Smith Companies, the area’s largest developer of office buildings. The experience he gained while working on the landlord’s behalf is an invaluable asset when now solely representing the interests of his corporate clients.

Cahill has published articles on life science real estate issues for Area Development magazine, has been interviewed for various professional publications, and has been awarded the Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM) designation by the Commercial Investment Real Estate Institute.  CCIM’s are recognized experts in the disciplines of commercial investment real estate.

Dr. C. R. (Buzz) Canup is the Founder and President of Canup & Associates, Inc. He has extensive background and experience working with world-class corporations on a global basis. Dr. Canup has assisted major international and domestic companies in performing site location studies, incentives negotiations, property acquisition, construction management, and project implementation. The types of projects have included — but were not limited to — headquarters operations, research and development, manufacturing, high technology, warehousing and distribution, and other operating facilities.

His experience includes all phases of a client’s project from start to finish, including feasibility analysis, strategic planning, strategy development, site location studies, incentives negotiations, property acquisition, permitting and zoning, engineering and construction, work force recruitment and development, start-up operations, and maintenance. Dr. Canup’s background and experience also crosses several complementary fields of expertise, including site location studies, economic development consulting, business development, human resource development, personnel management, and college administration.

Canup brings a unique perspective to his clients and customers. He has been lead consultant representing private business and industry in performing major site location studies, and he has been lead consultant working with states and communities to recruit private business and industry mega-projects to their location.

Additionally, Dr. Canup has managed and directed project implementation for both private industry and for public entities after the location decision has been made. By way of example, he was engaged by one of his private-sector clients to assist in planning, coordinating, and managing a consolidation and relocation of several operations after he had completed their site location study. The client was closing two manufacturing plants, building a new manufacturing plant, consolidating the R&D function, and relocating their headquarters operation to the new location. Representing the public sector, he was contracted by the state of Mississippi to manage and direct all of the commitments the state made to Nissan during the recruitment process, involving over $300 million in state, federal, and local funds for Phase I, and growing to over $400 million for Phase II.

Before forming Canup & Associates, Dr. Canup spent nearly 20 years with Fluor Corporation in various executive positions, including Managing Principal of Global Location Services, the site selection and economic development consulting arm of the company. He has also held executive-level positions with various other organizations, both public and private.

Dr. Canup is quoted frequently in both national and regional newsprint and magazines, and has published several articles in economic development magazines. He is also frequently asked to speak at national and regional conferences and workshops.

Jim Kupferer brings a wealth of project execution experience across diverse industries to his role as Managing Director of Fluor’s Global Location Strategies practice. Over the past 11 years of directly marketing, managing, and executing all aspects of the facility site selection process, he has acquired a specialized base of experience across a multitude of industrial projects and industries.

Kupferer has completed numerous successful site selection and incentive negotiation projects for many Fortune 500 clients with a total capital investment exceeding $11 billion. These global projects have spanned North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Specific industry experience includes automotive (car, truck, and heavy truck OEM facilities); automotive-related (engine, tire and rubber manufacturing, and suppliers facilities); biopharmaceutical (research and development, pilot/scale-up, bulk API manufacturing, and fill/finish facilities); foods; healthcare; power generation; chemical (base chemicals, intermediates, polymers, specialty chemical facilities); and general manufacturing (durable goods, etc.). Facilities include new headquarters, distribution, and research and development with tremendous experience in new greenfield site locations and existing facility expansions for manufacturing and process operations.

Kupferer’s expertise includes execution of corporate location studies from strategic alignment through site selection, pre-implementation, and project start-up activities. He is proficient in facilitating team alignment and strategic project definition, early feasibility, global competitiveness analyses, location and community analyses, site identification/creation, and detailed site and infrastructure evaluation. He has strategic expertise in areas of project due diligence and incentive negotiations, as well as pre-implementation and implementation activities focusing on capital costs and investment issues (real estate costs and property acquisition, infrastructure costs, work force recruiting and training, sales taxes, etc.); up-front project development issues and costs (permitting requirements and schedules, zoning and land use regulations, development fees, project risks, etc.); and operating issues and recurring costs (real/personal property taxes, corporate income taxes, sales and use taxes, work force, transportation, utility rates, project risk mitigation, etc.).

Kupferer has a strong background in leading, managing, and executing with an integrated team addressing all issues above including engaging necessary legal, environmental due diligence, public relations, and announcement activities in order to ensure detailed negotiations and agreements lead to smooth transition during start-up of operations. He also executes economic development consulting initiatives, speaks at industry events, and writes articles for industry publications.

Kupferer’s corporate clients have included Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Pfizer, BioPort Corporation, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, Shell International Exploration and Production, Shell Chemical, Shell International Chemical, Wacker Chemie AG, Orica, Nissan, Michelin, Freightliner, Honda, Audi, Brose North America, Caterpillar, TransAlta, Columbia Electric, Chicago Pneumatic Tool, Trex, Kroger, and Fluor Corporation. His economic development clients have included the state of Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Affairs, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Governor’s Action Team, the state of New York, and the state of Mississippi.

Michael R. Press is Managing Director of Duff & Phelps’ Business Incentives Advisory Services, which assists companies in accessing the myriad financial incentives and benefits offered by state and local governments in return for their human and capital investment initiatives. Prior to joining Duff & Phelps, he established and then led the highly regarded Ernst & Young Business Incentives practice for eight years as a Tax Partner in that firm.

Press brings more than 20 years of experience in economic development and tax incentives to the practice, having served in both government and nongovernmental consulting roles including as Chief Economist and Deputy Commissioner for Policy in the New York City Office of Business Development, Chairman of the Enterprise Zone Administrative Boards of four such zones in New York City, and supervising incentives advisory consultant to many Fortune 500 companies.

In this latter capacity, Press developed relationships with economic development officials across the U.S. including in California, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nevada, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. For instance, he led the negotiating team that brought the Boeing Company’s world headquarters to Chicago.

Michael Press is a frequent speaker to industry groups on the topics of business taxation and economic development. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and has authored numerous articles for Area Development magazine, the Financial Executives Institute, the National Association of Corporate Real Estate Executives, the Official Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce and the Journal of Multi-state Taxation. He currently also serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Tax Incentives Alert.

John M. Rhodes has been a Senior Principal of Moran, Stahl & Boyer since 1994. In this capacity, he has directed numerous corporate consulting assignments related to headquarters, back offices, customer contact centers, distribution operations, and industrial plants. Industries served include financial services, insurance, transportation services, biotech, and diverse manufacturing. He has also been responsible for economic development projects related to strategy development, target industry analysis, marketing tools, and related activities for communities and their utility partners in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Texas, Oklahoma, New York, Virginia, Connecticut, and British Columbia.

Rhodes worked for General Electric Company in their Power Generation, Aerospace, and Engineered Plastics divisions, as well as in corporate marketing in roles including plant engineering, environmental engineering, marketing, and sales management during an 18-year career.

John Rhodes has written a series of articles and white papers related to community economic development strategy, university towns, relocating headquarters operations, siting data centers and call centers, location strategies for high-tech companies, U.S. innovation centers, and related topics. He has also made presentations to CoreNet and its predecessor organization, IDRC, along with the International Economic Development Council, Utility Economic Development Association, and regional/statewide conferences in the United States and Canada.

Rhodes received a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Northeastern University, Boston, and a Master of Engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY.

Jonathan Sangster is a Senior Managing Director with CBRE Consulting and is based in Atlanta, Georgia. He leads a team that delivers strategic real estate solutions to corporate clients, focusing on global business location solutions and corporate real estate strategies. Sangster assists clients in finding “best fit” locations that align with their strategic business objectives, addressing needs resulting from mergers and acquisitions, business expansion, restructuring, and rationalization.

Prior to joining CBRE, Sangster spent nearly 17 years with a global energy company, Southern Company, where he held leadership roles in engineering, contract administration, purchasing, and human resources. While at Southern Company, Sangster played a significant role in the start-up and implementation of The Southern Company College, a corporate learning organization focusing on leadership development, cultural change issues, and employee communication.  A two-and-a-half year loaned executive assignment with the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) included planning and implementing the training process for a 55,000-person volunteer work force for the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games.

His specialties include strategic business location solutions, economic incentives, and corporate real estate strategies. Recent business location successes include corporate headquarters relocations (Arbys, DS Waters); back-office and customer care operations (Medco Health Solutions, BellSouth, Washington Mutual); manufacturing (Serologicals, American Pharmaceutical Partners, Square D); and distribution (Dot Foods, Arbonne International, Kyocera Mita). Recent real estate portfolio solutions have included Cox Communications, Schneider Electric, Tennessee Valley Authority, and General Motors.

Phil Schneider, a principal with Deloitte Consulting, is the global lead for the firm’s Global Expansion Optimization and Location Strategy practices. His primary responsibility is to manage location strategy and site selection engagements, a field in which he has over 20 years of experience. Schneider has conducted over 250 location strategy and site selection engagements for corporate clients across the industry and functional spectrum including shared service centers, call centers, R&D facilities, and manufacturing, headquarters, and distribution operations.

Schneider has led client location strategy engagements throughout much of the world, including projects in China, India, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Chile, Cost Rica, Mexico, and throughout Europe and North America. Prior to joining Deloitte, he was a director at PHH Fantus, where he also managed location strategy engagements. He has authored numerous studies, articles, and speeches on site selection methodology, international location strategy, and economic development.

Representative clients include Amgen, Apple, AstenJohnson/Heimbach, Barilla Foods, Bosch, Brambles, Bridgestone, Caterpillar, Core Materials, Crown, Genentech, Hyundai, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, Palm/U.S. Robotics, Morgan Stanley, Nestle, Palm, Pratt & Whitney, Raflatac, Soitec, ThyssenKrupp, Toyota, The Gap, and Ube.

Thomas J. Stringer is a Director in the New York office of Duff & Phelps, LLC and is a member of the Business Incentives Advisory practice. Stringer has over nine years of experience securing federal, state, and local incentives worth more than $300 million for small, middle market, and Fortune 1000 companies.

In addition to representing clients in some of the largest transactions on the East Coast, he is often engaged by regional, state, and foreign economic development agencies to advise on all phases of strategic business development and foreign direct investment initiatives. Engagement highlights include negotiating incentives for a beverage industry headquarters and manufacturing facility in the New York metropolitan area, as well as the retention of a 500-employee financial services headquarters (two of the largest deals in the region for 2006); and performing location analysis and labor study, and securing $20 million in public incentives for the development of a major beverage bottling facility in Phoenix, the largest investment in Arizona in 2005.

Stringer also maintains ongoing consulting relationships with several European and Canadian government agencies on foreign direct investment initiatives; has negotiated incentives for a global chemical company in one of Pennsylvania’s largest business; secured significant World Trade Center Economic Recovery grants for clients affected by the September 11th attacks; and negotiated a contract with the state of Louisiana and city of New Orleans that permitted the National Football League to host the 2002 Super Bowl on a tax-free basis.

He is a frequent speaker on a variety of real estate, business incentive, and site selection topics and serves as a resource in these fields for various business media including The Financial Times, National Public Radio, Area Development magazine, Long Island Business News, Rocky Mountain News, and Newsday. He is also the author of business incentives articles appearing in the Journal of MultiState Taxation and Incentives and Area Development magazine.

Linda Tresslar is Managing Director of the Strategic Consulting Group for Grubb & Ellis Company. She is responsible for overseeing consulting activities and managing relationships with corporate and institutional clients, helping to formulate real estate and investment strategy and providing operational consulting, portfolio rationalization and planning, business location and site selection analysis, and valuation and acquisition/disposition oversight. A key focus of the consulting practice is to help companies form sound real estate decisions that will enable them to best meet overall business and investment goals.

With over 20 years in the real estate and finance industries, Tresslar has significant real estate experience at both the corporate and asset levels of activity, having spent a substantial part of her career dealing with real estate as it relates to overall corporate and portfolio strategy, organizational structure, and operations and capital structures. Prior to joining Grubb & Ellis, she held a variety of positions, with FPL Associates Consulting, Balcor/American Express, and GMAC Commercial. She is an active member and speaker in numerous industry groups including the Urban Land Institute, NACORE, the Turnaround Management Association, and the Counselors of Real Estate.

Tresslar and her consulting team have worked with clients in a variety of industries. Among them are Arthur J. Gallagher & Company, Cornerstone Advisors, Equifax, Equity Office Properties Trust, Fremont Investment & Loan, Georgia-Pacific, Hanover Insurance Group, Hewitt Associates, Kamehameha Schools Endowment, Principal Financial Group, Qwest Communications, Verizon Wireless, and Vonage.

Dean Uminski is in charge of Economic Development Services at Crowe Chizek and Company LLC. He has an extensive background in all aspects of state and local taxation and specializes in site selection and business incentives and credits consultation. He has more than 28 years of tax planning, economic development, and consulting experience with manufacturing, wholesaling, retailing, service, and financial-related business entities, 17 of which were spent in industry with Fortune 200 firms.

Uminski has performed site selection and economic development consultation services on over $2.2 billion of capital investment for manufacturing, wholesale/distribution, call centers, retail, service, R&D, and corporate/regional home office-related projects in 32 states and Canada. His work entails all aspects of economic development planning, including market analysis, strategic planning, capital improvement planning, site location assistance, financing, exit strategy planning, business attraction and expansion/retention planning, tax abatements, statutory and nonstatutory tax credits, and negotiations with local, regional, and state economic development officials.

Richard C. Underwood is Vice President of Contract Logistics at APL Logistics, which he joined in January 2007. He has corporate oversight of the sales efforts on transportation and warehousing services from his office in Oakland, California. 

Underwood’s experience in the logistics/supply chain industry has spanned 25 years on both the shipper and service provider side of the businesses. Prior to joining APL Logistics, he owned and managed Best Logistics Consultation Services, which provided sales and operational support to shippers and service providers. As an operations executive on the shipper side, Underwood has held senior management positions with Fortune 500 companies, such as Mars, Inc. and Specialty Brands, Inc. On the service provider side, he has held senior sales positions with FedEx Logistics, Skyway Freight Systems, and Exel Transportation Services.

His expertise covers all modes of transportation (domestic and international), warehousing (public and private), warehouse and manufacturing site location and optimization analyses, inventory management, information technology, freight invoice audit and payment, and customer service.

Underwood earned his undergraduate degree from Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN, and his Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA. He is an active member of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and a former national board member of the American Society of Transportation and Logistics.