Atlanta-based CNN announces layoffs amid company-wide changes

Posted on by Michael Randle

CNN is slashing dozens of roles as the company implements a series of changes that will narrow and shift the direction of its business model under new leadership.

Mark Thompson, chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide since August 2023, said in a company-wide memo sent on July 10 that about 100 jobs “are being eliminated or are at risk” of being eliminated as a result of the shakeup. 

It is unclear how many of these positions are based out of CNN’s Atlanta headquarters. A spokesperson said Atlanta is CNN’s largest bureau but declined to comment on the number of local jobs that may be impacted.

Atlanta Business Chronicle

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Southside Atlanta MSA cities see economic growth, adapt to emerging transportation challenges

Posted on by Michael Randle

A slew of new projects is emerging across the Southside, from health care and infrastructure to sports and entertainment.

The plans reflect how the area, which includes Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the surrounding logistics and transportation hub, continues to capture investment and expand services.

First up, health care. Grady Health System will build a freestanding emergency department in South Fulton County. It’s targeting a site south of Interstate 20

in Union City for the 20,000-square-foot hospital. The project was most recently estimated to cost $45.7 million to build, Grady officials told Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Atlanta Business Chronicle

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$11.1 million investment will create 35 new jobs in S.C.

Posted on by Michael Randle

COLUMBIA, S.C. – MP Husky, a manufacturer of cable support and power distribution systems, today announced it is expanding its Greenville County operations. The company’s $11.1 million investment will create 35 new jobs.

A subsidiary of Gower Corporation, MP Husky has more than 60 years of experience designing and manufacturing cable tray and cable bus power distribution systems. The company’s products are used in various industries including automotive and renewable energy.

MP Husky will invest in new equipment and expand its existing facility located at 1370 Old Stage Road in the city of Mauldin.

Operations are expected to be online in fall 2025. Individuals interested in joining the MP Husky team should email jobs@mphusky.com.

The Coordinating Council for Economic Development awarded a $100,000 Set-Aside grant to Greenville County to assist with the costs of site preparation and building improvements.

South Carolina Department of Commerce

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$15.7 million investment will create 79 new jobs in S.C.

Posted on by Michael Randle

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Palmetto Corporation, a site development and construction company, today announced it is growing its South Carolina footprint with a new operation in Fairfield County. The company’s $15.7 million investment will create 79 new jobs.

Founded in 1987, Palmetto Corporation is a family-owned company that delivers the materials, services and solutions needed for paving and site development. The company has over 1,000 employees at its six, existing South Carolina plants in Bishopville, Conway, Florence, Greer, Lugoff and Orangeburg.

Palmetto Corporation’s new, state-of-the-art asphalt plant located at 5471 State Highway 34 E. in Ridgeway will be the company’s seventh in South Carolina. The Fairfield County plant will produce asphalt for road construction, resurfacing and infrastructure development.

South Carolina Department of Commerce

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Greater Washington, D.C’s economic outlook at standstill with ‘frozen’ commercial real estate

Posted on by Michael Randle

The economic outlook for Greater Washington continues to show a region locked in stasis by a chilled commercial real estate market.

At the same time, a handful of data points offer a glimpse of hope for the near future. The most recent index, however, sits 12.2% below where it was a year ago in May 2023.

Like in April, the score continues to be weighed down by a growing intensity of distress in the region’s commercial real estate markets, which face higher interest rates and softer demand. Valuations of commercial space, especially downtown offices, have also fallen dramatically, leading to fewer transactions. Office foreclosures in the first half of 2024 have already exceeded the total number recorded in 2023, CBRE reported, fueled primarily by rising vacancy and upcoming debt maturities.

That’s the latest finding from CBRE’s REVIVE Regional Vibrancy Index charting the D.C. area’s economic strengths and weaknesses in the wake of a pandemic that changed the core of how the region operates, from the shift to hybrid work to the evolution in how people get around.

Washington Business Journal

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SB&D: SouthBound

Posted on by Michael Randle

Is what’s going on in the automotive industry real?
A mirage? Maybe it’s somewhere in between?

By Michael Randle, Editor

In over 40 years of studying the game of economic development (which has always reminded me of the board game Stratego, complete with miners, bombs, spies, scouts and generals), I have never seen numbers like these. Not even close.

Are we so frenzied with daily political drama we don’t even notice the billions being invested, or at least announced. . .so many billions that they boggle the mind? Are there simply too many distractions, such as social media and streaming services, to even care that in just three short years about $150 billion in investments have been announced by automotive OEMs in the electrification of a really old industry?

SB&D tracks everything with the resources we have. And in the automotive world, so does the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Center for Automotive Research (CAR). CEO Alan Amici spoke to our Southern Economic Development Roundtable group in January (SEDR@ThePearl) and he and others will present at our Southern Automotive Corridor Summit, August 15-17 at the Grand Bohemian Lodge in downtown Greenville, S.C. Want to go? Let me know. You must be invited to attend.

I touched on the subject in this issue’s cover story. According to Amici, and CAR, $4 billion in investments were announced in North America by automakers in 2018. From 2021 to 2023, $146 billion in investments were announced, almost all on the electrification of automotive; $82.5 billion in 2023 alone. As Amici said at SEDR@ThePearl, “We are in the fourth year of a 110-year-old industry.” Whoa!

An “announcement” of a deal is one thing. For the deal to work and be real is another. What is going on now with next-generation mobility is not sustainable. There is just way too much competition and incentives too great to pass up.

It seems that each quarter an EV startup announces a deal. This past quarter it was Scout Motors (South Carolina) and Imola Automotive (Georgia). Imola Automotive? Will Imola really house 7,500 workers at a proposed plant in Fort Valley, Ga., after Rivian Automotive officially delayed the groundbreaking of its plant east of Atlanta? And after Tesla just cut nearly 3,000 jobs at its gigafactory in Austin in April?

I was there when the late Gov. Carroll Campbell announced BMW in Greer, S.C. A watershed moment for the South. It was a long time ago and we will be back there with our Southern Automotive Corridor Summit this summer at the Grand Bohemian Lodge in downtown Greenville, S.C.

I was also there when Alabama announced Mercedes-Benz, on a hillside in Tuscaloosa County, and someone in our group said, “Can’t you just smell the paint shop from here?” That was over 30 years ago.

Those two deals and so many more in the third largest economy in the world were sound, solid projects that have changed the economies of those two states forever. Yet, at the time, like today, they were considered crap shoots.

As for the electric vehicle industry, it remains to be seen how it will shake out. After all, we are only in the “fourth year of a 110-year-old industry.” It better work out. . .there’s just too much money on the table for it not to.

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Company plans to add 160 jobs in Lake Charles, La.

Posted on by Michael Randle

A Port of Lake Charles company will invest $3.5 million in its facility over the next three years, a move that will result in 160 new jobs.

Process Service Specialists, a specialty industrial mechanical contractor, will make the updates to provide commercial and industrial steel, piping and comprehensive services to customers around the world, particularly in the semiconductor, solar panel, petrochemical and energy industries, officials with Louisiana Economic Development announced.  

Average pay for the new jobs will be $100,000. LED also predicted over 300 indirect jobs as a result.

“This expansion is a powerful illustration of the ripple effect that manufacturing investments have on our state’s economy, resulting in more than 300 additional jobs that support the work being done at this new facility,” LED Secretary Susan B. Bourgeois said. “This project is a win, not only for 160 new PSS employees with the opportunity for ever-growing wages, but for the economic activity that will be stimulated across the city, parish and region.” Baton Rouge Advocate

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Jeff Landry appears at controversial Louisiana plant, challenges federal rule on cancer risk

Posted on by Michael Randle

Gov. Jeff Landry appeared at one of the country’s most controversial chemical plants on Monday to announce his administration’s legal challenge to a new federal rule aimed at reducing cancer risks, but which he says will unnecessarily hurt jobs and the economy.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule, announced by the Biden administration in April, would require major emissions reductions from plants up and down the Mississippi River and elsewhere in the state and nation.

The rule would cut emissions of six likely human carcinogens from 51 chemical plants and refineries in Louisiana and, across the nation, eliminate tens of thousands of tons of toxic and smog-forming air pollutants. The smog reductions alone would save nearly $770 million in health costs, federal regulators say.

Flanked by the state’s attorney general, environmental chief and others, however, Landry decried EPA’s application of the new rule on Denka Performance Elastomer, a Reserve chemical plant that has been the frequent focus of the Biden administration. He also detailed new legal action against the federal agency.

NOLA.com

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Beshear visiting Japan, Korea to recruit more investment, jobs

Posted on by Michael Randle

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Gov. Andy Beshear  is taking an economic development trip later this week to Japan and the Republic of Korea to seek new jobs for the state. He will meet with leaders at companies with existing Kentucky operations as well as businesses considering future investment in the United States., The Governor will be joined by First Lady Britainy Beshear, Cabinet for Economic Development Secretary Jeff Noel, Transportation Cabinet Secretary Jim Gray and other members of the executive branch as Team Kentucky meets with companies and trade organizations to determine future investment and job-creation opportunities in the state.

The Kentucky delegation will meet with the Keidanren Committee on U.S. Affairs along with several existing Kentucky employers and potential prospects.

Gov. Beshear and Secretary Gray will also be meeting with the National Police Agency of the Republic of Korea to sign a Driver’s License Reciprocity Agreement. This agreement allows employees relocating to the United States for an extended period to have effective transportation to jobs and to ease their transition to the United States.

The visit comes after a record-breaking first term in economic development for Beshear, which included the highest private-sector investment figure of any administration in state history. Since the start of Beshear’s administration, 88 projects have been announced by companies based in Asia, representing nearly $13 billion investment and 13,000 new jobs.

Kentucky has nearly 540 internationally owned operations that employ more than 117,000 people statewide. The commonwealth is home to 200 Japanese-owned facilities that employ 47,000 people and seven Korean-owned facilities that employ 1,200 people.

“There is no better place to do business in the United States than right here in Kentucky, and this visit will allow us to share that message directly with business leaders in Japan and Korea,” Gov. Beshear said. “We look forward to meeting with existing employers and developing new relationships that will bring good jobs to the commonwealth.”

Team Kentucky’s economic development mission to Asia seeks to builds on the best four-year period for economic growth in state history.

During his four and a half years in office, Gov. Beshear has announced more than 1,000 private-sector new-location and expansion projects totaling nearly $32 billion in announced investments, creating more than 54,700 jobs. 

The robust job creation has been accompanied by rising wages across the commonwealth. The average incentivized hourly wage in 2022 and 2023 topped $26 in consecutive years for the first time.

The announcements include some of the largest economic development projects in state history, which have solidified Kentucky as the electric vehicle battery production capital of the United States: Ford Motor Co. and SK On’s transformative $5.8 billion, 5,000-job BlueOval SK Battery Park in Hardin County; AESC’s $2 billion, 2,000-job gigafactory project in Warren County; Toyota’s $1.3 billion investment in Scott County; and INFAC North America’s $53 million investment in Taylor County, among others.

The Governor’s administration has presided over the largest General Fund budget surplus and Rainy Day Fund, as well as the most jobs filled in state history. Last year, Kentucky set the record for the longest period with the lowest unemployment rates in state history.

Kentucky also secured rating increases from major credit rating agencies Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings, and Moody’s Investors Service upgraded Kentucky’s credit outlook from stable to positive.

In March, Site Selection magazine ranked Kentucky third nationally and first in the South Central economic development projects per capita in its 2023 Governor’s Cup rankings. In April, Site Selection placed Kentucky second in the South Central region and top 10 nationally in its 2024 Prosperity Cup ranking, which recognizes state-level economic development agencies for their success in landing capital investment projects.

Beshear announced a “Supply Kentucky” initiative with the goal of boosting job growth, reducing costs and providing more security in the supply chains of our Kentucky companies.

Information on Kentucky’s economic development efforts and programs is available at CED.ky.gov. Fans of the Cabinet for Economic Development can also join the discussion at facebook.com/CEDkygov, on Twitter @CEDkygov, Instagram @CEDkygov and LinkedIn.

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Hurricane Beryl makes landfall south of Houston area, knocking out power to around 2M

Posted on by Michael Randle

The storm will weaken as it continues to moves inland, but strong winds and heavy rains are passing right through the greater Houston area this morning. In addition to hurricane, tropical storm and storm-surge warnings, there are also multiple flood watches and warnings across the area. The City of Houston Office of Emergency Management and other officials have warned residents to stay off roadways.

As of 5:59 a.m., Houston-based CenterPoint Energy Inc. (NYSE: CNP) reported 533,831 customers affected by 2,308 active outages. As of 6:38 a.m., that had shot up to 966,465 customers affected by 2,890 outages. Entergy Texas — which covers eastern portions of the Houston area to the Louisiana border and is thus less affected than CenterPoint’s coverage area currently — reported 18,412 affected customers as of 6:50 a.m.

Outages are expected to continue rising before Beryl moves out of the area later today.

Acting Gov. Dan Patrick added 81 counties to the state’s Hurricane Beryl Disaster Declaration on Saturday, July 6, as the storm track shifted north toward the Houston area. That brought the total to 121 counties. Patrick took on the acting role to lead Texas through the hurricane while Gov. Greg Abbott is overseas leading a week-long trip to Asia to meet with business and government leaders in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Houston Business Journal

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