Upgrade to EDCU's Sure SItes
Did you know Utah has 36 Office/Tech/R&D parks of 100 acres or more within 10 miles of the Salt Lake International Airport, or that there are 10 heavy industrial sites of 100,000 square feet or more that are located within 10 miles of the interstate highway? Such information is just a smattering of the data now only a few mouse clicks away via EDCUtah's new, improved Utah SURE Sites online database.
The Utah SURE (Select Utah Real Estate) Sites program -- a powerful site analysis tool featuring industrial and office buildings and land sites designed to meet the needs of relocating and expanding businesses -- just received a facelift. It's now more user-friendly, more intuitive, and returns search data faster, says Sherrie Martell, EDCUtah program manager.
"We wanted the program to provide instant information," she explains. "The program was too big and bulky before, so we took out all of the extraneous items and made it easier for real estate brokers and economic developers to add their sites and update them. We also made it easier and quicker for site selectors to see what properties are available without being inundated with information."
Increased Speed
Speed and functionality were the major motivations behind the SURE Sites facelift. Martell says the site was completely recoded and the Google API was removed. Now the program caches the property location information on the server, so search results come back much faster -- "as quickly as you would expect to get results."
Users can search the database by the following property types:
Land
Data Center
Heavy Industrial
Light Industrial
Mixed Use
Office/Tech/R&D Park
Renewable Energy
Retail
Existing Industrial Building
Light Manufacturing
Heavy Manufacturing
Warehouse/Distribution
Medical/Pharmaceutical
Food
Clean Room
Existing Office Building
Office
Call Center
Data Center
Retail/Commercial
Commercial Free Standing
Commercial Shopping Center
Filters allow for more granular searches according to min/max square feet or acres, and by min/max proximity to the airport, the interstate, or rail access. Furthermore, Martell says users can simply pull up a map of Utah, draw a box in a specific area of the state, and the database will plot all of the available properties within that specific area. Next, users can click on one of the properties and the database will pull up the MLS sheet with pictures and real estate data for that property. Approximately 80 properties in the SURE Sites database are rural. The remaining 186 properties are located along the Wasatch Front.
The SURE Sites facelift also incorporated functionality to align it with Governor Gary R. Herbert's economic cluster initiative, so users can have a more granular look at properties within those specific industry clusters. Martell says a retail/commercial component was also added to the database, to assist some of the rural or smaller areas of the state that may want to attract retail development. No password is required, so site selectors, corporate real estate executives and other interested parties have free access to the information.
Bigger Than Ever
The SURE Sites database is bigger than it has ever been -- with 266 of the best site location opportunities in Utah, along with critical information necessary to make sound real estate decisions -- and continues to be an integral part of EDCUtah's economic development effort. In fact, SURE Sites is used often to vet sites for projects that require real estate. Martell says some of the SURE Sites involved in project wins within the past 18 months have included the Business Depot in Ogden, the Industrial Depot in Tooele, the Prologis Building in Clearfield, Fort Pierce Industrial Park in St. George, the Windfalls Business Center in Hurricane, and Port 15 in Cedar City.
The original SURE Sites program was launched in 2006 with the help of the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) and PacifiCorp.
"Our SURE Sites program is another example of the significant collaboration between the public and private sectors, which help make economic development so productive in Utah," says EDCUtah President & CEO Jeff Edwards, "and puts Utah a step ahead of the competition in terms of information availability and site screening."
source: Utah Policy Daily
