Friday, March 02, 2012

Site Selecting Shrinking Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh and its host state Pennsylvania are supposedly some kind of tax Hell. That's why Pittsburgh's population is in a death spiral. More bad news:

Pittsburgh has been named one of the top five sites for corporate real estate projects by Site Selection magazine. ...

... The ranking "confirms that the economic development leadership of the Pittsburgh region is delivering the location solutions required of today's site location decision-makers," Site Selection Editor-in-Chief Mark Arend said in a statement.

Exactly. Pittsburgh is dying. Wait a second. What? Read about the number one metro in the rankings:

The fastest-growing economy in North America is producing more corporate real estate projects than any other city in the U.S.

Greater Houston, which in 2011 secured 195 corporate facility expansion projects, is increasing the size of its metropolitan economy at a rate that leads every other metro area on the continent, according to a new study from the Brookings Institution.

As a result, it’s no surprise that Houston won Site Selection Magazine’s ranking as the No. 1 Large Metro in the U.S. for 2011. America’s fourth-largest city easily beat out second-place Chicago, which garnered 167 facility deals last year.

Following Houston and Chicago is Pittsburgh. Then comes Dallas and New York City to round out the top-5 for corporate real estate projects. That's some illustrious company for Shittsburgh. The other four should surprise no one. One of these things is not like the others ...

1 comment:

Ryan Champlin said...

I have a hunch that, despite all of the anti-tax crusades and doomsday scenarios of keeping corporate and other taxes high, taxes play only a minor role in economic development, at least at the levels they are currently at. Of course, if the taxes are set way too high (or too low), then they play a big role; but at their current moderate levels, I think we talk way too much about them.