Site Selection, the magazine that holds itself out to be”the magazine” of corporate real estate strategy and area economic development recently published a report of the nation’s top metro areas for relocation and development projects for 2014.
The report was dominated by Midwestern Metro Areas such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit, St. Louis, Louisville and Kansas City. Obviously due to their sheer size Dallas and New York City made the top ten.
The west has clearly dropped as the dominant area where a new development is going on. However an interesting result for 2014 is that in the top 5 metro areas for the Pacific region as well as the top 5 metro areas for the Mountain Region, Phoenix Metro dominated both regions by a large margin.
Phoenix Metro had more development and relocation projects than Salt Lake City and Denver in the Mountain Region combined. Phoenix also exceeded the combined number of projects in the Pacific region for San Francisco and Portland. San Francisco and Riverside combined also trailed Phoenix by 7 projects.
In the mountain region Albuquerque was 5th with Tucson, Arizona nowhere to be found in the report.
San Francisco in the Pacific Region was the closest single city with 62 percent of the 79 projects Phoenix announced, while both Denver and Salt Lake City each had less than 50 percent with 35 projects each for the year ended December 2014.
| Mountain Region 2014 | Projects | |
| Phoenix Metro Area | 79 | |
| Salt Lake City | 35 | |
| Denver Metro Area | 35 | |
| Las Vegas Metro | 18 | |
| Albuquerque | 12 | |
| Pacific Region 2014 | ||
| San Francisco Metro Area | 49 | |
| Portland Metro Area | 28 | |
| Riverside Metro | 23 | |
| Sacramento Metro Area | 16 | |
| Seattle Metro Area | 16 | |