Columbus Chamber Blog: Columbus Business News

Columbus Region InSite Tool Launches on ColumbusRegion.com

In case you missed the announcement in the Chamber's monthly email, be sure to check out the region's new GIS tool:

The Columbus Chamber has recently relaunched an upgraded Geographic Information System (GIS) on its economic development site, ColumbusRegion.com, an online tool for both current member companies and businesses that are looking to relocate from outside the Columbus region.

These enhanced tools will aid in the Chamber’s efforts to attract new capital investment, while optimizing site selection opportunities, making Columbus a more competitive option for prospective businesses.  GIS allows users to quickly and easily find the ideal location for their business within the eight-county Columbus region, as well as access overlays of demographic data by county. If a member business has grown and needs a larger space or a relocating business needs to be close to a highway or an airport, they can use GIS to identify a specific building that will suit their needs.

This tool goes far beyond a simple database of available sites and buildings. It provides the information and analysis businesses require to identify geographic advantages and business opportunities in our region. Buildings and sites are available throughout the nation. What makes the Columbus Region attractive to business is highly related to our location-specific advantages, which can be accessed online through Columbus Region InSite. If you have any questions about using the GIS tool, or would like assistance finding a site for your company or other information about doing business in the Columbus Region like comparative demographic analysis, please contact our economic development team at the Chamber.

Taking the Show on the Road

The Chamber led a small team of economic development professionals to the Dallas Fort Worth Metro Area to meet with site location advisers. The tactic is part of our proactive campaign to engage and educate consultants and real estate professionals that are hired by companies to assist with finding the best sites for their relocation and/or expansion projects. 

Site location advisers are one of our key audiences and business development missions such as this help keep the Columbus Region and our assets top of mind. Two local economic development professionals, David Meeks from Hilliard and Colleen Gilger from Dublin joined Justin Bickle and me on the mission. 

The team met with five location advisory firms and 14 professionals.  The firms were primarily focused on call center, data center and operations center projects but some also handled clients in the industrial and warehousing sectors.  

Consultants from the Dallas market have produced a number of leads for our Region over the last 15 months and based on our conversations, some of the firms are still seeing strong activity among their clients even in these slow economic times.