9 minute read
By Ashlyn Grey
By Ashlyn Grey Photos courtesy of EDPA
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The Economic Development Partnership of Alabama has recently announced the development of the Alabama Business Intelligence Center. The Alabama Business Intelligence Center generates actionable data insights for the recruitment and retention of Alabama businesses. Its initial areas of focus include industries, companies, and executives that align with Alabama’s value proposition.
In an statement, the EDPA stated that the purpose and resourcefulness of the new center is “to increase business development leads, strengthen partnerships through intelligence and resources, collaborate with allies and partners to unlock insights from the combination of quantitative and qualitative information, and position Alabama as a partner for business growth and investment. The Center envisions being a thought-leader on Alabama business and industry trends. It will augment EDPA’s partners’ current work and further position Alabama’s value proposition.”
Greg Barker, President of the EDPA, explained that Alabama Business Intelligence Center is the first comprehensive, statewide research hub of its kind, both proactively mitigating risk and identifying opportunities for targeted business growth and development with the goal of securing new investment throughout the state.
“Every business sector is increasingly dependent upon quality business intelligence to develop actionable strategies,” said Barker. “Economic development is not any different, and I am completely confident that the Alabama Business Intelligence Center will be able to provide the needed business intelligence so Alabama can continue to build on its economic development success.”
In 2021, Alabama was ranked ninth in job-creating economic development projects per capita in
Site Selection Magazine’s annual Governor’s Cup analysis. With the development of the ABIC comes optimism for growth and employment opportunities.
Additionally, Lauren Hyde, who serves as the first Executive Director of the Alabama Business Intelligence Center, also offered expertise through the official release, discussing viewing certain aspects through an investment lens. As a CFA® charter holder, Hyde is both well-versed in public and private company research.
“Success for the Alabama Business Intelligence Center looks like success for our partners,” Hyde stated. “ABIC will utilize a riskreturn framework of thinking when analyzing opportunities. We are committed to long-term investment in Alabama. It’s not just dollars, incentives, or time. It’s jobs and infrastructure. And we’re here to generate the actionable data insights needed to encourage this investment.”
The ABIC will work with the EDPA business development team and partners to execute projects for lead generation across the state. Additionally, ABIC will serve as a resource to the Alabama Department of Commerce – the State’s economic development leader.
ABIC will also support Opportunity Alabama and its statewide partners to generate data-informed interventions to build economic resilience in underserved communities, as they recover from the impacts of COVID-19.
According to Alex Flachsbart, Founder and CEO of Opportunity Alabama, ABIC will be a critical partner in the implementation of this initiative, which is funded by a CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant received in 2021 from the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
“In order to execute substantive, place-based strategic interventions, we need to understand local communities in a data-driven way, and ABIC will allow us to do just that,” stated Flachsbart. “We are fortunate to have someone of Lauren’s caliber providing actionable business intelligence statewide and grateful to the Economic Development Administration for supporting this effort.”
For more information on the Alabama Business Intelligence Center, please visit http://www.ALbicenter.org/.
2022 SMD Symposium Showcases Latest Missile, Aerospace Technologies
By Mike Easterling / Photos by Mike Easterling and SMD Symposium
There’s one less helicopter hovering above a mountain range, courtesy of BlueHalo’s Virtual Stinger Trainer and the author of this story with some help from Haden Downey.
It only took one shot from the company’s man-held missile system from inside the Von Braun Center’s South Hall.
BlueHalo had one of seemingly countless booths and information blocks set up at the VBC for the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium at the VBC Aug. 9-11.
This symposium, which featured over 200 exhibitors in 2021, provides companies with the opportunity to showcase technology and products to the Space and Missile Defense Command, Aviation and Missile Command, NASA, Corps of Engineers, the State of Alabama and other corporations.
BlueHalo, which is headquartered in Arlington, Va., but locally located at 401 Jan Davis Drive NW, bills itself as “purpose-built to provide industry-leading capabilities in the key mission areas of Space Technologies, Directed Energy, Air and Missile Defense, C$ISR, CNO, Multi-INT and Healthcare.
Hartselle native Ashley Young, the Public Relations Specialist for BlueHalo, said the symposium was “about building relationships with other industry partners, customers, and government within the industry. And as a team, just having everybody here from across our company being together.
“BlueHalo has a large scope of projects and programs across multiple sectors, but we also partner on contracts with other companies alongside us here at SMD–working together to innovate for the future and protect our nation and warfighters.”
Young said BlueHalo has a “huge’’ presence in Huntsville and also Albuquerque, NM., and Colorado. According to Jimmy Jenkins, President, Defense Sector at BlueHalo, the company sets itself apart from its competitors in several ways.
“We’re different in the sense that we’re more agile, quicker and cheaper, so that’s kind of our niche I would say. For example, we do all this missile work and assembly at our Huntsville location.
“We’re a team of seven people. So if customers need a missile, we can do it pretty quickly whereas the bigger guys would be millions of dollars and months long and all of that kind of stuff. We’re able to do stuff quick and agile.’’
Among the featured speakers at the symposium was General Jim Dickinson of SPACECOM and Major General Sean A. Gainey, who represented Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (CUAS).
The event was brought to attendees by ASMDA, NDIA Tennessee Valley and ADAA RSA/Huntsville Chapter.
Sponsors included:
BlueHalo, CACI, Unanet, BAE Systems, Deloitte, Dynetics, SAIC, Parsons, Northrop-Gruman, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies (Platinum); SMX, Mercury, Epirus, Spirit Aerosystems, ASRC Federal, Bradley, Bank of America, Torch Technologies, Teledyne Technologies (Gold), Axient, M3, CAES, Battelle, Riskonnect, deciBel Research, Koda Technologies, Bigbear.AI, General Dynamics, IERUS, Linquest, HTS, AWS, Equator, Sentar, Intrepid, CFD Research, Boecore, Venturi, Radiance Technologies, PeopleTec, Nlogic, Intuitive, DESE Research, Davidson (Silver), Yulista, SMX, Government Matters, DefenseNews, MFGS, TecMasters, IPTA, asmartplace, Cohesion Force, Calibre, Draper, HTS, Aerojet Rocketdyne, UAH, L3Harris, Penta Research (Patrons). w
Real Estate Update: A Return to Pre-Pandemic Market Conditions
By Marie Johnson / Photo courtesy of Huntsville Area Association of Realtors
The Huntsville Area Association of Realtors’ report for the month of July has been released. These figures suggest that the reverberations of the pandemic disruptions to the residential real estate market have largely settled out. 802 homes sold in Madison County last month, down from 930 sold in July of 2021, and even a bit below the 863 sold in July of 2019, the last year before the Coronavirus pandemic. There were 1,273 homes on the market, almost twice the available inventory of the previous year, and closer to the 1,231 reported available in 2019.
Of particular interest is that the average sales price of a home in Madison County last month - $391k - is still below the national average, as reported by the National Association of Realtors, but only just. With the national average sitting at $410,600, the gap in housing cost is shrinking.
With homes spending an average of 11 days on the market in Madison County last month, sales are still brisk, but slowing just a bit from June’s 8-day average.
With inventory and listing periods more in-line with pre-pandemic levels, it appears that the Huntsville-Madison County real estate market has gone into a slightly less frenetic, but still quite brisk growth. It’s the sort of growth more typical of a city experiencing something of a boom instead of the aberrant, more unstable growth that came about as a result of destabilizing market disruptions and panic buying. w
Above left shows the real estate market of Huntsville Madison County. Above right shows the combined market of Limestone, Dekalb, Etowah, Cherokee, Jackson, Marshall, and Madison counties
Lori Leonard Selected as Director of Marketing for CVB
After 25 years in the Greater Birmingham area, Lori Leonard has returned to North Alabama where she now holds the position of Director of Marketing at the Huntsville/Madison County Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB).
After graduating from the University of North Alabama with a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing, Lori served as the Executive Director for several non-profit organizations including the Homewood Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Hoover, and Leadership Trussville. She also served in marketing leadership roles at various for-profit entities and ran a successful consulting business for many years.
In her new role at the CVB, Lori will oversee the promotional and advertising efforts of the agency as well as various campaigns. Lori will work with social media and graphic design team members, as well as hospitality industry partners, to continue positioning Huntsville, Madison, and Madison County as top visitor destinations and meeting sites.
For more information, contact CVB Executive Vice President Charles Winters at (256) 551-2235 or via email at cwinters@huntsville.org.
Mike Banks Joins Regional Builders, Inc. as Director of Construction
Regional Builders Inc., a division of NAI Chase Commercial Real Estate Services, announced today that Mike Banks has joined the firm as Director of Construction for the company’s offices in Huntsville and Birmingham.
“We are delighted to welcome Mike to the team,” said Charles Grelier, Jr., President of NAI Chase Commercial. “Mike’s background and depth of knowledge of our communities make him extremely qualified for this position.” Banks will be responsible for managing all construction operations and opportunities in Huntsville and in Birmingham.
“This is a great opportunity for me, and I’m very excited about the growth potential for Regional Builders,” Banks said. “We want to continue to brand Regional Builders as a premier general contractor for the state.”
Banks has more than 40 years of experience in the construction industry as well as related fields. Prior to joining Regional Builders, Banks co-founded a local heating and air conditioning business, later served as an operations and project manager for a local property management and real estate development company, and also served as the general manager for a large HVAC company.
“Our success is often directly related to completing our projects on time and under budget,” Banks said. “We’ll continue to make customer satisfaction our No. 1 objective.”
Banks is a Huntsville native and is well known throughout the contracting industry as a top relationship builder through the range of responsibilities he has overseen.
